


Eye Of The Bearimy

by Serena_Rose



Series: No Place Like [2]
Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fantasy, Fantasy Sex, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Gore, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Torture, Rape/Non-con Elements, Romance, Starvation, Torture, Whump, missing chapters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:54:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 77,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24654166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serena_Rose/pseuds/Serena_Rose
Summary: A collection of 'missing' chapters and drabbles that take place within Michael and Eleanor's year away together during the events of No Place Like. These span over many months and at different points of their relationship, Eleanor's healing and Michael's redemption.Part One - Michael decides on an unusual therapy pet for Eleanor which he quickly regrets.Part Two - Eleanor remembers her many 'lessons'Part Three - Michael gives Eleanor the stars. Seriously.Part Four - The Little Voice speaksPart Five - A gift for MichaelPart Six - Touched by an angel/demonPart Seven - Nightmares haunt both Eleanor and Michael.Part Eight - Eleanor's hungerPart Nine - When dreams bleed into reality
Relationships: Michael (The Good Place)/Eleanor Shellstrop
Series: No Place Like [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1782481
Comments: 55
Kudos: 52





	1. Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> I did say that I had grown rather attached to my babies in this AU and it seems I'm not quite ready to let them go just yet. I don't have any plan for how many of these I'll do, it's mostly where I can expand on parts and random moments I skipped over in the main plot.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael decides to give Eleanor an unusual choice of therapy pet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This first chapter is a gift for 'mariant' who specifically requested fun times on the back of a dragon.

_A Month Post Rescue_

There seem to be two versions of Eleanor that Michael has to deal with every day. He’s never entirely sure which one is going to surface when he goes to wake her up each morning.

One Eleanor is highly anxious and skittish. She wakes with a scream on her lips, no matter how gentle Michael tries to be, as if the brush of his fingertips somehow burned her. He should be laughing at the irony, really, given what the touch of his real body could do to her. But it’s difficult to laugh, even internally, when this Eleanor who refuses to be handled is much more difficult to care for. She won’t let him carry her out the room or give her a bath. He’ll have to leave her food on a plate and coax her to eat it, to drink what liquids he provides, though it’s often like talking to a wall. This Eleanor often zones out, her damaged mind caught in a web of tortured memories left by that spider named Trevor.

The other Eleanor is almost the exact opposite. She’s terribly clingy, her hand usually reaching out for Michael before she even wakes up and refuses to let go all day. Where the first Eleanor is distant and quiet, attempting to shut herself out from the world, this one is typically overly sensitive, more prone to be upset by a sudden loud noise or wrong smell which dreads up the damn flashbacks. While this one is more amiable to let Michael care for her, take her and guide her to where he needs her, she’s rather annoying. It’s much more difficult for Michael to get anything done, be it work or chores or just being allowed to chill the fork out, with her hanging onto him like a leech.

Given a choice, he thinks he’d rather get the first Eleanor. At least he can leave that one alone for a short while. She’s more like a cat while the other Eleanor is more like a scared puppy demanding affection. Everyone knows cats are cooler. And Spider Dogs beat them both.

Today, unfortunately, it seems he’ll have to deal with the latter.

He enters her bedroom and finds her twitching on the mattress, bedsheets kicked mostly off her body, pyjama shorts twisted around her hips. It’s not a full-on nightmare, not like the ones that have sometimes kept him with her from dusk till dawn, as it’s almost impossible to do anything else when your feral human is screaming the house down. But there’s no such thing as a peaceful sleep for Eleanor, not at this point, maybe not ever. This is the closest they can get to a quiet night and Michael is happy to take it, as much as the anguished look on her face makes him wince.

There’s not much he can really do about that. He has the power to take surface level memories away but he doesn’t know how to alter subconscious thoughts. If he were to go too deep, tinker with something he wasn’t supposed to, it could leave Eleanor as a drooling vegetable. It would make the Eleanor he was currently caring for seem fully autonomous. Or it could change her whole personality and she wouldn’t be Eleanor Shellstrop anymore. At least this broken version was a shadow of the real thing.

And no, he can’t reset her memories back from before she went to the Bad Place. The idea had come to him a couple days ago, when Eleanor had a reached a real crisis point, shrieking and scrambling away, convinced that Michael was going to hurt her simply because he was holding a kitchen knife and had turned to ask if she wanted jam on her toast. She had taken forever to calm that morning and Michael’s fingers had twitched in mid-air, ready to snap, ready to take all the pain away to stop her making that horrible noise. To make it all better.

But then she’d suddenly stopped. She’d looked at him, going silent, possibly recognising the distress on his face, how damn useless he had felt in that moment. And she’d crawled into his arms.

It would be too much trouble if he reset her. Shawn thought it was unfair for Trevor’s hard, decent work (“Real torture, the way it is supposed to be!”) to be undone. Even when Michael tried to stress that Eleanor had been left in such a state that it was unlikely she would be fit for his experiment anymore, Shawn had replied that he could take up the offer to swap her out with another human, or sort it out himself. Michael had already gone through that decision process.

Eleanor isn’t going anywhere. Eleanor belongs to him and no one else.

Michael takes a breath, preparing himself for what today will bring, sliding down onto the bed and touching the twitching fingers on her outstretched hand, thumb smoothing around hers. He tests her response to being touched nowadays, rather than making assumptions, being too forward or too distant. Eleanor’s reactions usually tell him how close he should be.

Her eyes shoot open with a terrified gasp, her body going deadly still.

He gives her a moment to wake, for her brain to settle, his fingers continuing to link around hers, looking at her with a patient smile. It always takes a minute or a few for her to see that the powder blue room she’s woken in isn’t her concrete cell, that Michael isn’t his sadistic pervert of a fellow demon.

“Hey, sweet girl.” Michael says, softly; “You in the mood for some pancakes?”

Eleanor’s lip wobbles, eyes blinking into focus, and the terror starts to wane as her fingers tighten around Michael’s.

She shuffles up onto her knees and moves forward, slipping her arms around his torso, her breathing still a little uneven. Michael knows then which Eleanor he’s woken up today. It’s not the worst of reactions. He smiles, stroking her hair, taking it as a compliment that his cooking is improving.

*

As the days had passed into weeks and then a month, Eleanor finds her fears are less to do with Trevor taking her back and more centred around Michael sending her away. He never says as much, of course, but even the limited grasp she has on reality, she can read how frustrated he gets with her at times. She notices the twitching of lines around his eyes, the tension in his voice when she’s becoming too much for him.

At first, she expects him to lose it. She braces herself to be beaten, to be thrown across the room, to be called a stupid bench or a useless whore, or worse. She waits for him to summon Janet and get her to send a message to Trevor’s Bad Janet, letting him know he can take her back. That he doesn’t want another immortal being’s damaged goods.

But then she wakes up the next day and he’s still there. He’s holding her hand. He’s smiling.

Every touch Michael gives her is so delicate, so tender, from the way he helps her into the bath and washes her hair to the way he helps her get ready for bed. After so many weeks of the same routine, it’s difficult for Eleanor to imagine those hands of his being capable of harming her. Eventually she sees the hands as a comforter, almost as much as her actual blankets, wanting them to always be close.

When Michael carries her out of her bedroom, she tightens her grip when he goes to put her on the sofa. He gives a heavy sigh and reluctantly takes her with him to the kitchen.

“This human suit only has two arms I’m afraid, Eleanor.” He tells her, sitting her on one of the chairs around the island. It’s not the comfiest seat but she’ll take it if it means being close to Michael.

A part of her knows she must irritate him, but the last shred of her courage is willing to push it.

Her fingers clutch at her seat as she watches him turn to the worktop. There’s two mugs of coffee cooling next to the kettle. She frowns, wondering if this means someone else is coming here, before Michael turns and offers one to her. She recoils a little, at first, the steam making her heart race.

“Milk, three sugars, been cooling for fifteen minutes. Just how you like it, right?” He smiles.

So precise, more details than she was aware herself. It takes a moment for Eleanor to remember that Michael isn’t some mundane, sweet, old carer. He’s a forking angel who knows everything about her. Right down to how much she loves…or rather, loved…her morning coffee.

He might as well be holding the world out to her.

She has to push against reluctant muscles to make her arms move, hands reaching up and accepting the mug. The china is warm in her fingers but not unbearably hot, she knows all too well what that feels like. She glances up to Michael who gives a reassuring nod, and Eleanor takes a sip.

She swallows after a moment of savoring the familiar, bittersweet taste on her tongue. Then she sobs, nearly spilling the rest of it before Michael’s hands steady hers.

“Easy, easy…” He calms her, probably able to tell from her tears that this isn’t a reaction of disgust.

It’s just how she remembered. It’s perfect. Too perfect for a dirty whore like her.

She glances over the mug to Michael’s eyes, meeting them cautiously, just for a moment. She thinks his eyes are beautiful, soft and caring, she could lose herself in them and she’d be safe.

He smiles and turns back to the stove, making a start on those pancakes. He trusts her with the cup, not to spill it, not to drop it and break it like the clumsy bench she is. It warms her heart to appreciate that, for all the tender care and support Michael gives, he’s never once treated her like a child. He’s never been condescending, never overly fussy, never keeping her in a bubble of limitations. He always presents her with these little steps for her to take on her own, as an adult. And he’s always there to catch her if and when, usually when, she stumbles.

She wishes she could give him…something. Show some way to express her thanks as she can’t use her tongue to do so. She can’t even try to hug him with her hands clutched around the mug.

All she can do is sit, drink her coffee, and watch Michael stir the eggs and flour together, singing Katy Perry under his breath. Eleanor tries not to sway as a single feeling of bliss hits her from nowhere, she doesn’t understand how anything could get better than this.

*

Clingy Eleanor wasn’t too bad today, it turns out. It wasn’t as if Michael had anything important to get done, other than working on some song lyrics, which he could technically do in his head anyway. After breakfast, he sets Eleanor down in a chair in front of the patio door, which she seems to prefer settling in during the day rather than the TV, ever since he found her pawing at it the other morning. He opens it only slightly, giving her a taste of fresh air, sunshine on her face.

She’s still not ready to go outside yet. That’s fine. A couple of days ago, she would have been terrified to venture too far from her bedroom or the sofa. The coffee was pretty big step this morning, her eyes connecting with his for a brief, yet wonderful moment. That blip from the other night doesn’t seem to have been a one off after all. Eleanor is there, buried deep down, but she’s there. Michael vows to dig her out, one scoop a day, if that’s what it takes.

While she spends most of the day watching the waves in the distance, Michael feels her eyes following him every now and then as he busies himself, the whimper she makes when he goes towards his office making him reconsider. He has a conference call to make but he can put it off a little bit longer, he supposes, taking a seat next to her instead, his proximity enough to put the light back into her eyes. Silly, needy human.

He tells her about things he witnessed in his ‘childhood’, leaving out the more revealing, demonic details. He tells her about when him and his fellow angels gathered to watch the moon being formed when another planet collided with the Earth. She seems strangely interested rather than just tuning him out as white noise and he uses one of Janet’s tablets to show her some photos of the event, unseen by any other human eyes – at least, those in the Bad Place, but she doesn’t need to know that part.

They go through quite a view important events before Eleanor either starts to get bored or the stimulus is too much and quickly burns out, just after dinner, her hair nearly dipping into the spaghetti when she struggles to keep her head up.

It was Michael’s fault, really, too distracted spending time sharing memories with her to make sure she took her afternoon nap. They’re probably due for a difficult night. It’s all par for the course now.

A bath can be skipped for tonight, he thinks as he puts her to bed rather early.

There’s a few hours to kill until he’s due to make his call to Vicky, Gale and Bambadjan. He decides to carry on with Game of Thrones. Some of his employees had recommended it along with a drinking game, to take a shot every time a character does something to lose them points, which apparently was a lethal game even for demons.

Michael doesn’t plan on getting drunk, not when he’s still technically on the clock with caring for his human. He’ll need to be sober if she starts screaming from a night terror.

A couple of seasons in and Michael knows every character belongs in the Bad Place except the wolves and the dragons.

He’s gripped enough in one episode to barely notice a shuffling in the corner of his eye.

It’s only when he feels something lean against his knee that he looks to see Eleanor sat at his feet, hugging her legs to her chest. He pauses the show and touches her hair.

“Can’t sleep? Why, Eleanor, that's a first!”

She shakes her head. He’s amazed that she didn’t try to whine for him to come check on her, that instead she woke herself up with enough ease to crawl out to him on her own. Her eyes don’t look too puffy or her skin moist with sweat.

He doesn’t berate her, doesn’t try to force her back to bed against her will, even though the routine they’ve managed to get into is massively going off track. Maybe that wasn’t a terrible thing. It would be so easy for Michael to try to slip into the role of a parent and treat Eleanor like a little kid, probably better than any adult who cared for her growing up had done, but he knows neither of them wants that. She’s not a toddler, he doesn’t want a helpless child. He needs her to be the strong, somewhat immature but still powerfully devious woman that had managed to bewitch _him_ , a forking demon, before all of this happened.

“Come on then.” He reaches down for her and she holds onto him, letting him tug her up onto the sofa. She immediately crawls onto his lap and makes herself comfy.

Does she realise that she has the rest of the sofa to use?

Whatever, Michael sighs to himself, letting her snuggle close as she watches the screen. One character is threatening another with a sword to their throat.

“We can watch something else.” He tells her, worrying more if one of the torture scenes comes up. He’s not sure Eleanor could have picked a more triggering show to appear during.

Inexplicably, she shakes her head.

There’s a slight tremble during some of the more gruesome scenes, her body jumping every now and then at the sight of blood, but she just clings on to Michael tighter, sated by his hand rubbing her back, her eyes fixed on the screen. Such a curious thing she is. The sight of a kitchen knife was enough to send her in to a full-on panic attack but a man being impaled through the heart is tolerable for her? It rather impresses him that her brain is able to tell the difference between reality and fiction to such a degree.

Or maybe she just feels safe in Michael’s arms? There’s a cruel irony to that which should be enough to make him laugh. It doesn’t feel as funny as it sounds, he thinks, his chin resting on top of Eleanor’s head.

There’s a small hum from her when she sees the dragons soar through the sky and set fire to the slave traders. Michael looks to see a…wow. She’s actually smiling. It’s faint but it’s there.

The sight of a bad guy being burned alive by dragon fire was all it took?

Had Michael known that, he would have grabbed a load of deckheads from the Bad Place and set up a barbecue. He smiles to himself, losing interest in the show but fascinated with Eleanor’s reaction as he holds her. Her favorite moments seem to be when the dragons turn up. It gives him an idea to…No. It’s too early days for that.

Once again, she falls asleep on his lap before the season is over. She really is the worst movie watch buddy, always passing out before the end.

He thinks he’ll try to make popcorn tomorrow night.

Her hands still hold onto him, out of instinct now, when he carries her back to her room and tries to lay her down, tucking the covers over her for the second time today. He watches her sleep, noting how the shade of that smile can still be seen playing on her lips as she rests on the pillow. Michael strokes her hair, hoping that she dreams of flying on a dragon and burning her own demons tonight. He wishes he could implant those images in her head to replace all the poison Trevor infected her brain with.

“Goodnight, sleepy head.”

It’s only when he’s quietly crept out of her room that he realizes he’s missed his conference call. Oh, shirt. Damn it, Eleanor, stop making this harder than it needs to be!

*

_A Few Months Later_

He carefully walks her down the steps, keeping one hand clasped over her eyes.

“Just a little further. No peeking.” Michael tells her as their feet tread across the sand.

“Better not be another sandcastle, dude. That’s so last week.” Eleanor retorts, not saying that hadn’t been an awesome display of Michael’s powers, but the thrill had rather quickly worn off.

However, it had given her a taste for something new and unique to her newfound existence which hadn’t occurred to her before. Magic. Fantastical wonders that stretched beyond more than just infinite desserts and no hangovers. Maybe it was because, ever since her first night in the Good Place, whenever something magical had appeared, it had been chaotic and dangerous, a threat to hide from. Whether it was a stampede of giant ladybugs or a massive sinkhole to hellfire, and that was without going into the dark fantasy horrors that Trevor had created for her in the Bad Place.

In all those unpleasant experiences, she’d forgotten that magic could be…well, magical. Wonderful, even, if wielded by the right person. And who better than her own personal angel buddy?

There’s a slightly pungent scent of sulphur that makes her nose wrinkle.

She can hear something…rumbling?

“Okay, ready? Surprise!” Michael removes his hand.

Eleanor’s eyes blink open, not sure what she’s expecting. When she sees it, her hands cover her mouth.

A great, black and red beast is perched on the beach, its front claws picking between some recently gnawed bones of a creature Eleanor can’t recognise. The rumbling she heard before seems to be coming from its heaving chest as it sniffs and licks the last scraps of meat it can find. Its leathery wings are enclosed around its back, a long tail of spikes curled around its back leg. The ridges carrying multiple spines along its neck and back rise and constrict with its steady breathing. Good thing it looks relaxed, as Eleanor thinks her heart is pounding enough for all three of them right now.

She looks at Michael, his hands still on her shoulders; “You got me a friggen’ dragon?!”

“Well, you seemed to enjoy the unicorns,” He says, grinning at her reaction; “This is Carl. He’s a three-thousand-year-old ruby horn dragon from two dimensions over. He’s still pretty young, didn’t wanna scare you with a fully grown one of his kind, they’re almost as big as Tahani’s house. Still, be careful of those claws, they can slice through human bone like butter.”

“And his name is…Carl?” Eleanor gives her angel a look, as that’s honestly the strangest part about her new present.

Michael tilts his head at her; “It’s short for a name that is impossible for your human tongue to pronounce.”

“Carlos?” She takes a wild shot in the dark.

He frowns at her; “…Okay, maybe not. Anyway! Do you like him?”

“Uhm…” Eleanor is still reeling a little, her eyes drinking in the sight.

A unicorn was one thing. It was basically a colorful horse with a horn on top. She’d also seen one in the Good Place before, though it had mostly defecated on Tahani’s flower arrangements. A dragon was a little more out there. From a distance, it feels as though she’s just watching another episode of Game of Thrones. But now, as well as seeing it, she can feel its heat radiating, and smell its breath even from three metres away.

Michael’s hands are still firmly on her shoulders, as if she might huddle back against him.

“I can snap it away if you want?”

She turns and holds his hand still; “No! No, just…gimmie a minute. Is there like a greeting I have to do, like…bow or something?”

She doesn’t want a Draco Malfoy versus Buckbeak situation.

Michael takes her hand and carefully walks her forward, guiding up to lean it up to the ridge between the dragon’s eyes and its right horn, encouraging her to pet it gently with her fingers. She takes a breath and gives the scaly creature a soft scratch, trying to remain calm as Michael lets go of her hand and steps back, giving them space.

The dragon finally acknowledges her presence and rears its head in her direction, sniffing her slightly. The thing is as big as a polar bear. She can’t imagine being up close to a fully grown adult if it’s the size of her posh friend’s mansion. This is definitely more than enough for her mind to handle right now. As its nostrils flare and it takes in her scent, she trembles a little, before it nudges her slightly and she can’t help but laugh, moving her hands to stroke its face. She takes it that means that she’s made a friend today.

“Hey, buddy. Nice to meet ya.” She chuckles, “Oh, aren’t you a sexy boy, huh.” Eleanor looks over her shoulder to Michael; “He won’t try to eat me, will he?”

Michael waves his hand; “Oh no, I made sure he was well fed on sharks beforehand.”

That explains the bones. Gross. Eleanor tries to avoid stepping in those and focus on petting her new humongous reptile. She finds one of the few ribs with any meat on and offers it to Carl.

“There you go, pal.” She smiles, letting his long, forked tongue slather at the offal before nuzzling her again. It’s rather disgusting but Eleanor can’t help but be won over.

She’s always had more of an attraction to the unwanted pets. Her dog, Max, had been a mongrel stray. It wasn’t as if her mother was going to pay for a dog. When Eleanor first got her own place, she’d been tempted to get a lizard, as they were cool and wouldn’t need as much care she assumed, but her room mate claimed to be allergic. Somehow.

After a few moments bonding with Carl, he straightens up on all four of his legs and lowers his wing.

“Wow, you certainly made a good first impression. He wants you to fly him.” Michael grins, having stood back and watched in silence for the past several minutes.

“You serious? I…Oh my god.” Riding a unicorn had been incredible, if also close to the biggest acid trip she’d had in years.

This seemed a little more extreme. Dangerous, even for the Good Place.

Michael edges closer; “C’mon, I’ll give you a hand-.”

Carlos raises his hard frills like hackles and rears his long neck around Eleanor to roar at Michael, making the Architect stumble back, raising his hand up, looking somewhat stunned. Eleanor puts her hands to the oddly protective dragon.

“Hey, hey!” She smooths her palms along his scales, trying to pacify him; “It’s only Michael, silly. He’s our friend.” Carl huffs, pulling his head back a little, still seeming a little tense, exposed claws feeling through the sand. Eleanor turns to Michael; “He really doesn’t like you, bud.”

“Ah, well…Dragons are not too fond of Good Place employees, as they’re not welcome to stay here for that long.” Michael seems to dismiss.

Carl gives another low growl, his body seeming to curl around Eleanor, tail threatening to lash out if Michael comes closer.

“Okay, well…You two clearly have issues, I can see that.” She says, patting Carl’s neck; “But listen, bud. I’d really like to go on a ride with you but I’m a bit nervous on my first time and I could do with Michael here showing me the ropes. So, you mind letting him come on with me? Just this once?”

She watches Carl’s amber eyes soften as she speaks, even though there’s still some tension in that muzzle of his. With a reluctant huff, he lowers his wing again. Eleanor thanks him with a scratch behind his horn.

“How To Train Your Dragon in five minutes, baby!” She says with a grin, turning to Michael.

“Well done.” He puts his hands on her hips and gives her a boost up onto the creature. She grabs onto, well, whatever she can, while Michael hauls himself up; “Right, get a firm grip.”

“There’s no reigns or saddle, what the fork am I supposed to be holding?” She mutters, feeling rather nervous now.

Michael slides one arm around her stomach; “Yeah, dragons don’t take well to being restrained. Trust me, if he wants us to stay on, he’ll keep us on.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Well, it’s been nice spending time with you, Eleanor.” Michael says and she turns, giving him a sharp look that makes him smirk; “You have nothing to worry about! I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. Promise.”

Eleanor takes a breath. It’s a good thing that she trusts him with her afterlife. He’s the one who saved her from eternal damnation. Rescuing her from falling to a splattering fate from a dragon shouldn’t be too difficult, she hopes.

She straightens up and turns to looking at the back of Carl’s horned head.

“All right then. Carly, my boy, you wanna show me what you’re working with?” She asks, giving him another pat.

A strange instinct tells her it’s best not to kick him as if he were a unicorn.

It seems to be the right call as Carl rears forward, his wings spanning out wide either side and quickly starting to flap. The gust of wind is rather sharp and Eleanor regrets not tying her hair back before climbing on. With a sharp shove, Carl pushes himself off the ground and starts to rise into the air, Eleanor clenching her legs tight around the ridges of his back, trusting Michael’s hold of her. She squeals with a rush of fear and excitement as they quickly climb higher and higher into the sky.

She dares to look down, seeing the beach house shrink beneath them. Then she glances back at Michael, who seems to be amused enough by her reactions. Flying must be so basic to him by now, having probably done it enough times for it to be boring, in all his aeons of existing.

Carl settles into his preferred altitude when they’re about half a mile in the air and begins to glide out, high across the ocean. Eleanor lets out a laugh, feeling the wind in her face.

“This is so forking cool, man!” She screams, confident enough to lean forward rather than leaning back into Michael.

The dragon seems to sense her enjoyment, moving a little more spontaneously, taking them through the clouds and then diving down to the sea again. It’s like being on the most epic roller-coaster without any of the long lines or cheap effects. All she needs is the smell of someone vomiting and it would be perfect. She thinks twice about asking Michael what would make him nauseous right now.

She laughs aloud, her fingers linking with her angel bud’s, never having felt so free in her life and death combined.

To think that just a few months ago, she thought that simply being able to sit and drink a cup of coffee with her own two hands would be the closest she would come to feeling real happiness again, after being dragged head first through fire and blood. Her fractured mind had been too small and frail back then to begin to imagine she would be worthy of experiencing the real wonders of Heaven. She should be as afraid of being burned by this dragon as she had once been of being burned by a hot drink. She’s never felt less afraid in her life. And, once again, it had been Michael to give her that push she needed before taking that step.

When Carl slows a little, his angle finally horizontal, Eleanor turns and wraps her arms tight around the Architect in a grateful hug, giving his shoulders a squeeze. He’s rather stiff in response, probably due to trying to make sure they don’t topple off the side, making her laugh again. What did she do to deserve such an awesome friend?

*

Janet’s book had mentioned something about therapy pets and how much help they could be to those recovering from trauma. Michael had pitched to Eleanor the idea of a dog, to which she hadn’t been so keen when he explained how it was impossible to bring her real childhood pet from Dog Heaven. She wasn’t up for a simulated construct like the one he’d given for Gale to have only to be able to kick into the sun as a way to freak Tahani out. But Michael had remembered the dragons from that show and how Eleanor’s face had lit up whenever they came on screen.

Dragons were a bit of a hassle to summon over from the hellish dimension they came from, only a few layers of reality from the same lava pits where Michael had once called home. He would deal with the paperwork some other time. Eleanor was on a kick for experiencing what magical gifts he could offer and if his favorite human wanted a dragon then she could have a dragon. He had no doubt the young one would take to her, they’re rather friendly at that age, either quick to imprint on a potential rider or quick to eat them. Michael was more than ready to snap the beast away if it so much as opened its jaw towards Eleanor.

He hadn’t quite accounted for the dragon not being fond of him. They were practically neighbors, after all. Some dragons, mostly the weaker kind like wyverns and serpents, were basically beasts of burden or tools for torture in some parts of the Bad Place. The answer hadn’t occurred to him until half an hour into his and Eleanor’s flight when Carl had swooped down to scoop up an eel in his claws and burned it in mid-air before catching it in its teeth.

Ah. He probably smelled the squid beneath the suit and mistook Michael for a meal.

Good luck with that, big scaly cat.

After their first flight, when Eleanor is so elated that she’s barely able to stand once they dismount, Michael leaves her to frolic and bond with her new pet however she pleases while he goes to make a start on dinner. He glances out the window every now and then, just to make sure Carl hasn’t turned her into a pile of bones to go with the shark, though he’s pretty sure he would tell by any screaming. He sees her take a few solo flights on Carl’s back, his ears able to pick up her joyful cursing and shrieks for miles until she circles back onto the shore again. She takes to these extreme, high fantasy activities like a duck to water, it amazes Michael. He can’t help but smile when he watches her soar to the sun when, just a couple months ago, she’d been afraid to even inch herself near a closed window.

That was his human. His Eleanor. She was truly one of a kind, definitely not your typical annoying and stupid lower being.

When he tells her dinner is ready, she rushes in and practically shoves the food down her throat, leaving a little to take back out and share with Carl. Michael blinks, not sure she even said a single word to him in the brief flash of her appearing in the kitchen. He shrugs, she’s having fun and spending time with a conscious being that isn’t him or Janet, that’s what is important. The book had said it was good for her to have a fresh connection with someone or something new and accepting of her.

It’s almost sunset when Michael looks out again to see the dragon curled up on the patio, table and chairs pushed far aside, Eleanor sat between its left wing and front claw, a book in her hands. At first, Michael thinks she’s moved on to trying to teach the dragon ethics, as most of the attempts she made to read those boring old books to him he brushed off with an excuse about having already met them and, as an immortal being, understood them all perfectly. Which he did, better than any stuck-up ethics professor. He knew everything!

It’s only when it starts to get dark and he walks outside that he sees the ‘book’ in Eleanor’s hand was actually a magazine about the Kardashians, mostly focused on Kim and Kanye’s latest bust-up. The trashy celeb mag lay limp on her lap as its reader had fallen asleep against the dragon’s side, Carl sheltering her with his wing as he coiled around her. Michael smirks at the sight. That’s more like the Eleanor he knows and adores.

As comfy as she looks, he can’t leave her out here to sleep all night. But as Michael moves forward to wake her, Carl’s eyes shoot open and he emits a warning grumble.

“Look, pal. I know I probably smell tasty to you, but you don’t wanna try it, all right.” He whispers to the beast; “I’m just trying to get our little human here to bed.”

He reaches out again.

Carl bares his many rows of teeth, wings and frills raising up, still keeping his growl low. Eleanor stirs a little but doesn’t wake, warm against the young dragon’s underside. Michael frowns, studying the way it almost looks as though it’s trying to retreat with her. The last time he saw a dragon move like this, it was guarding its horde of gold from being stolen.

Oh. So, that’s it.

He doesn’t see Michael as food. He sees him as a threat.

A threat that he must protect the human he’s imprinted on from at all costs.

“…What? You think I’d ever hurt her, you big dumb brute?!” Michael hisses, feeling oddly offended; “Oh, please. You’ve known her for a day! You have no idea who I…”

But Carl’s glowing eyes say differently. A dragon’s senses extend beyond more than the physical. They’re as perceptive as most eternal, mythical creatures. He can smell the centuries worth of blood on those hands.

He knows exactly who Michael is. What he is. What he’s done.

Even Michael can’t help but see it as he catches his reflection in the amber irises.

They both know what he’s supposed to be planning to do with Eleanor once this little vacation comes to an end. Even if Michael has refused to think about it, let himself be distracted by as many little wonders as he could during these months, the truth of the situation was always there, waiting in the shadows. The beast knows that there is no greater danger to Eleanor in this micro-universe than the fire squid disguised as a human standing before him.

He clenches his jaw, “Should’ve gone with a cat.” Michael snaps his fingers.

The dragon vanishes and Eleanor falls, her body reacting before it wakes and putting a hand out to stop herself falling onto the bricks. She raises her head, blinking rapidly, looking around in confusion.

“Dude, where’s my dragon?” She asks, sleepily, rubbing her eyes.

Michael puts on his best apologetic smile and offers a hand to help her up. He comes up with a lie about dragons only being allowed in the Good Place at temporary times, as they need the atmosphere of their home dimension to thrive. He promises to summon Carl another day, whenever she wants. The answer seems to placate Eleanor enough. Crisis averted.

But then Eleanor gives Michael a smile and does that thing where she kisses his cheek before she can go to get ready for bed. She thanks him for the best surprise so far, the one he had just snapped away out of shame and envy. That’s the moment it hits him. The stupid dragon was right.

He is a monster.

*

_A Couple Months Later_

Eleanor stretches out on the towel, listening to Rhianna sing from her earbuds, as the sun shines down. She’s happy for it to be a day where she does nothing but lay in the warm rays and let it grant her some more color. She never wants the sickly, light gray skin that she had all those many months ago. She uses her folded bikini top as a cushion, letting her petite breasts get a well needed tan. She no longer feels any shame for showing off her body, confident enough to block out the nasty voice in her head. For today, anyway. Maybe not tomorrow but she takes what she can get.

It’s hardly as if there is much for her to be modest about anymore. The only other living being here has now not only seen every inch of her but also felt every inch of her. Been inside her.

There are moments where she can hardly believe that they crossed that boundary. But, in truth, at least from Eleanor’s perspective, it didn’t feel as though all that much had changed. Her and Michael had been closer than she had been with any previous relationship for months before they finally kissed and slept together on the same night. The time they had spent together, with only each other, talking and holding and having fun, when had she ever felt as though she had truly bonded with someone like that before? Michael had become her best friend, but she made no secrets about being attracted to him, or being aware that he was into her. They just never said it out loud because, well, what if it ruined a good thing? The best thing Eleanor had since being taken out from the Bad Place?

Nothing had been ruined. Everything remained pretty much the same. They still did all the bestie room mate stuff they did before, only now they got to add kissing and sex to that list of activities. If anything, so much had been improved rather than tarnished. It felt as though she’d won the complete package Heavenly Holiday getaway, complete with angelic boyfriend.

She’s just thinking of how she hopes Michael finishes whatever work project he’s getting done in his office so he can come out here and truly ‘appreciate’ her being topless, when the ground starts to rumble.

Eleanor sits up, flicking her sunglasses down from her scalp to her nose; “Michael?”

She shrugs his shirt on and pops her earbuds out, tucking them into the pocket. The waves begin to grow a little as they fall against the shore where they had been calm before.

Her heart begins to pound. She’s long since become used to being outside on her own, even venturing for long walks near the woods, no longer worried about a sinister demon lurking in the shadows, waiting to snatch her away. But this is something irregular. Unknown. And she’s alone.

What is happening? Was something wrong with the-?

The answer comes quick as a portal opens and something large and wide blocks out the sun. Eleanor lets out a small scream, stumbling backwards off the towel.

She’s about to call out for Michael again before a roar fills the air as a long neck rears up to the sky, about twice the size of the beach house. A red and black scaled head looks down and flashes a pair of amber eyes. Her fear dispels as she recognises those eyes in a second.

Eleanor grins, bouncing on her feet; “Holy shirt, Carl, is that you?!”

The dragon perches down on the sand, taking up a much larger space than he once did, curling his massive wings in. He caws a little, moving towards Eleanor, leaning his big head down and taking a sniff.

“Hey, buddy….I missed you. C’mere!” She welcomes him nuzzling her, his head now so big that she can barely move her arms around his neck like before.

There’s a pang of guilt in her chest as she reflects on how there’s little truth to her words. Having a dragon had been awesome, for a day, and she’d been bummed that he’d had to leave so soon, just as they were starting to really connect. But she’d been so easily distracted by other mythical wonders Michael summoned for her in the weeks that followed; griffins, mermaids, her own virtual bar, anything her mind could fathom he provided. Every time she had thought of asking to try and summon Carl back, something else always seem to come along to put it off.

And then she had begun to wonder if maybe it was a good thing they hadn’t spent more than a day together, if it wasn’t healthy for dragons to be here all the time, so Michael claimed.

“Look at how big you’ve grown, dude.” She compliments, smoothing her hand over his shoulder ridge; “I bet you get all the hot dragon babes chasing you, huh.”

“I’d say it’s been about a thousand years or more in his dimension.” Michael explains, finally appearing as he walks down the patio steps towards them.

A thousand years and he still remembered her? How forking sweet was that.

The look on Michael’s face tells Eleanor that Carl didn’t arrive here due to some glitch. She certainly said nothing to Janet about wishing for her dragon back, though she regrets not taking the chance before.

“You brought him back for me? Why now?” It’s a rather random, though not unwelcome, surprise present.

Michael takes a step closer and Carl moves forward again, rearing his head in front of Eleanor and releasing a ferocious roar in Michael’s direction, creating a gale so strong it nearly blows his glasses off. Eleanor sighs and steps between the dragon’s bared fangs and her Architect.

“Hey, hey! Quit that! We’re friends here, remember? Cool it!” She warns the dragon.

“He’s right to be angry with me.” Michael says and Eleanor turns to him, confused; “I wasn’t completely honest before about why Carl had to go away. Truth is…I was a bit jealous.”

Eleanor’s hand falls to her side.

“Jealous?” She balks, feeling a little cold, even with the hot, smoking breath of her giant reptile friend behind her.

“Yeah. I mean, you two were spending so much time together and…Let’s face it, dragons are much cooler than…” Michael gestures to himself and then, after looking as though he’s about to throw up, says the word; “ _’Angels’_. I…very, very stupidly thought you would get bored of me…So I sent him away but, I swear, I would have brought him back if ever you asked!”

She almost wants to be mad at him but, when he says that last part, Eleanor can’t help but feel it would be hypocritical for her to be too harsh on the guy considering she never bothered to ask for Carl back after that day.

There was also something rather funny about the idea of an angel being jealous.

“So…why today? What changed?” Eleanor asks, reaching back with one hand to keep stroking Carl’s head.

Michael takes a cautious step closer, stilling when the dragon huffs at him.

“Well, it’s just what you said a while ago about…Trevor always giving you stuff only to take them away?” He looks pained enough by simply having to make the comparison; “…I don’t ever wanna do anything like that to you. I…I’m sorry.”

Eleanor feels her shoulders relax a little. As deckish as what Michael did was, the fact that he was able to recognise it and fix it instantly melts whatever ice was forming inside of her. The magical dummy had already given her so much, more than she was convinced that she deserved given the awful person she had been in life, and he did it without expectation or reward. This one blip with Carl is one of the few moments she thinks she can fault him for since he brought her here. And it’s enough to make him feel that guilty when he could have said nothing and Eleanor may never have learned the truth.

She takes a few strides forward and puts her hands to Michael’s face, pulling him in close until her lips are pressing against his. Eleanor brushes her finger against his jaw, his own hands moving to her hips, below the hem of his borrowed shirt, as he returns the kiss.

“Apology accepted.” She whispers as they part, the tip of his nose brushing against the top of hers as she lowers down from her tip toes.

She tugs Michael by the hand towards Carl.

The dragon grunts in disdain, recoiling a little as Eleanor brings Michael closer.

“C’mon, buddy, don’t you be getting jealous too. Michael and I are a team, okay? It’s either both of us or neither.” Eleanor makes clear, “Just one ride. Please?”

She links her fingers with Michael’s.

The dragon lowers its frills and lets out a huff before crouching down to the sand. He moves his wing to the side, allowing them to climb up the handy set of ridges and spines that give access to his back. Eleanor doesn’t need Michael to lift her up this time. She hoists herself up and then offers her hand to help bring Michael with her.

“I have flown on a dragon before, Eleanor.” He says, accepting her help all the same.

Carl’s back is a lot wider this time, the space between his wings now something of a hallowed out groove that is more comfortable to sit in without the worry of falling off or needing to grip onto something, unless the dragon plans on doing any sharp turns or fancy flips through the air.

“Yeah but have you ever joined the mile-high club?” Eleanor asks Michael, turning him so his back is against the base of Carl’s neck and she’s up against him, her arms sliding around his shoulders.

“All I know about that club is it has really exclusive membership and is a guaranteed pass into the Bad Place.” Michael tells her with a raised eyebrow.

She smiles, a sultry look in her eyes, “Doesn’t bother me, I was doomed before I died. And as for you, angel buddy, this is your own Place, Good or Bad. The way I see it…”

Eleanor undoes a few buttons on his blue shirt.

“You can do whatever you want.” She whispers before kissing him again.

She barely notices as Carl takes off into the air, his speed and posture a lot steadier this time, keeping himself at an angle so his riders don’t fall off. The mild wind rushes over them, the salt air wafting up from the ocean below.

Michael runs his fingers through her hair as she presses herself into him, her own hands moving to quickly loosen his jeans. His mouth is quick to travel down her neck, nibbling slightly at her shoulder, before moving to the top of her breasts. It amazed her that, for a billion year old virgin, he had been an impressively fast learner in his latest little project that was studying human lovemaking. His body was, thankfully, as human as they came, but the senses he used to trace her pleasure receptors made every session something completely otherworldly. He always knew exactly where to place that mouth of his, not to mention how to work those long fingers along her naked body, better than he could play the guitar for sure.

There’s a slight buck upwards as the dragon flies higher, flapping his wings, and it makes Eleanor wrap her arms tighter around Michael, her hips moving over his groin as he removes her bikini bottoms down to her ankles. She glances down at him, nudging his glasses up to the top of his brow to match her sunglasses, losing herself for a moment in those piercing, blue eyes.

She grins, hungrily, before moving herself onto him and welcoming him inside of her already moist lips. Eleanor grinds, carefully, on top of him as he moves to match her rhythm.

His hands feel up underneath her shirt, clutching her to him, his mouth finding the base of her neck.

“Fork, Michael…How do you even…” She breathes, heavily, as he makes her shudder all over, her fingers grabbing the folds of his skin suit.

He moves his hips up against hers, a hand on the back of her head. The security of his grip had been something that won her over ever since the day he carried her from that cell. Or even before then, when the Bad Place train had first turned up, how he’d stood between her and the demons, not knowing how truly awful it was about to get. She trusts that he would never have truly let her go if he’d been there.

Some small, secret part of Eleanor thrilled at the idea of being wanted. Of being Michael’s favorite human that he desired to cherish and keep safe above all else. Was it selfish? She didn’t forking care at this moment.

Her mind is too busy being blown away with the ecstasy of Michael’s cock thrusting up inside of her, hitting her g-spot, her walls pulsing around his length and making her cry out to the clouds that were only a few metres above them now. The buzz of the flight and the speed keeps her energized and ready for more, demanding more, which her angel is more than willing to provide.

He makes her come twice more before they finally start to fly back down to the shore.

Forget the mile-high club, they seem to have started a whole new special group of their own. Very exclusive membership for dragon riders only.

*

“Therefore, the Draconian Dimension has regretfully made the decision to issue you with a six month ban on summoning any residents from our universe. Once again, we wish to remind you that dragons are to be summoned for flight and spectacle purposes, not to be involved in carnal activities as this disrupts their mating cycle and can cause deep, psychological damage. Thank you and good day, signed from the High Dragonlord - Beth.”

Janet rolls the scroll back up.

Michael sits next to Eleanor on the sofa, his arm around her, the both of them looking rather bashful after having Janet read to them the letter from Carl’s world after they had said goodbye to him.

“Well…shirt.” Eleanor curses, her cheeks a little red.

“Gotta say, that’s the first time in centuries that I’ve ever been scalded from a whole other dimension.” Michael admits, a part of him feeling a little proud.

Forget angels. How many demons got to lay claim to something like that?

He thanks Janet for the message and politely dismisses her. He rubs Eleanor’s shoulder, feeling a little guilty that he brought her pet dragon back only for him to have to be sent away for a while again, simply because the two of them couldn’t keep it in their pants for one little ride.

“I feel sorry for Carl. I was so sure he was into it, the big perv.” Eleanor quips, her fingers walking across Michael's jeans.

“He probably was to start with and maybe he bragged to his friends and word got out. Dragons tend to be quite horny…in more ways than one.” Michael shrugs, stroking her hair; “We’ll try to summon him back in a few months and see if we can make it up to him. If not, maybe a different dragon would be best? Anything for my Kelsea.”

His human girlfriend groans.

“It’s _Khaleesi_ , you big dork!” She corrects him, sitting up and laughing; “If you’re not gonna get it right, don’t try to role play. Just be your sexy, magical self, okay?”

He nods, agreeing to that, letting her kiss him again.

Dragon queen or not, she had come leaps and bounds since they had stayed up watching that show together. It was incredible. She was incredible. Often times, Michael would stare at her, and wonder if it was truly the same woman who trembled when he'd put her to bed each night. Obviously, it was. She’s Eleanor Shellstrop. He’d known from the start that there was no way hellfire could burn away that spirit for good. He knew it was possible to bring her back, he just hadn’t expected how far he would fall to his knees for her as she flew to the sky.

Be himself? Could he do that without giving too much of the truth away? It already felt as though Eleanor knew him better than anyone, even if she believed he was a Goody Place two shoes.

As awful as he’d felt for taking Carl away before, she didn’t seem to be grieving for his loss a second time around, and neither was Michael. It made sense. As incredible as dragons were, could they do to Eleanor what Michael had earlier? Could they kiss and touch her in all the right little pressure points? Could they make her scream in perfect euphoria? Clearly, the answer was no.

If there was only going to be room for one monster in Eleanor’s life, it may as well be him.


	2. Lessons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eleanor remembers what Trevor taught her. She always remembers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Rough non-con oral sex, torture scenes, bones breaking, eyes and finger gore.

_If I fall along the way,_  
_Pick me up and dust me off_.

-

On the days when he’s angry, it’s like a sudden explosion of violence entering her cell, rather than the slow, teasing games he plays with her the rest of the time.

He has her chained in shackles that constrict tighter the more she tries to struggle against them. She was smart enough to give up on that before they crushed her ankles. Don’t be an idiot, Shellstrop. Don’t lose the two things that will be most important in getting away from this place, should the opportunity rear its head.

Don’t stop hoping. Don’t stop waiting for that moment.

It felt like forever since he left her there, dropped on the floor, feet bound in the tightening, freezing metal that never seemed to warm up. She had been staring at the damn things, trying to work out a way to escape them, for who knows how long. C’mon, Eleanor. You’re smarter than this. Remember what Mom always said…

No solution ever came. The only thing to gnaw through was her own foot.

Not gonna happen.

If only she could sleep on it. If only she wasn’t so distracted with the never-ending hunger or the razer sharp dryness in her throat. Too many simple tortures that came with simple desertion and isolation. She knows her body is shrinking, losing more weight than she ever cared to before, ribs protruding against pale skin of her torso. Maybe, if nothing else, she will soon be able to slip her skeletal foot through the shackle without triggering it. Maybe.

She tries to visualize food into reality. Shrimp. Churro dogs. Frozen yoghurt.

Fork, it’s too much effort even to day-dream.

The door slams open. Before Eleanor can even raise her head, he’s storming over to her, his foot colliding with her chest. With a scream, she’s launched back against the wall, ribs cracking, skull almost breaking against the steel. When the black spots leave her eyes, all she sees is his face. His snarl. Something has royally pissed him off.

“You forgot, didn’t you slut?” he hisses, spittle hitting her eyes.

Forgot? Oh, right. She was supposed to ‘greet’ him in that microsecond when he opened the door. Seriously?!

The shackles are still attached, squeezing around her ankles. It’s pointless to run. That doesn’t mean it’s over. It doesn’t mean shit.

She dares to huff, eyes narrowing, incredulous.

“Go fuck yourself.”

And she knows she only has herself to blame for the beating that follows. It’s never a good idea to push him when he’s like this. But while she has her tongue back for however long he plans, she’ll use it to remind him that he won’t win this. She will never give him that. Even when his – Ow, fuck! – fists pummel and splinter – Oh, shit, stop! – her bones…

She’s a creased-up ball of black and purple flesh when he finally pauses in going to town on her already fragile body. He presses his shoe down on her thumping head.

“You’re in my class now, bitch. Time you learned your lessons.”

*

Eleanor stares at the plate on the coffee table. Chocolate chip. Warm and gooey, fresh from the oven. The smell is a big enough treat all on its own, she shouldn’t ask for more. Does not deserve more.

He left them for her. That’s what he said. It’s his first attempt and he wants to know what she thinks.

None of that made any sense. No one cares what she thinks. It doesn’t matter what she likes or dislikes. Whores don’t get a say in such things. They take what they’re given, which is never…this.

Her eyes tear up as they continue to stare at the cookies. She’s so forking confused.

She glances up at the office door. Closed. He’s had to leave her for a short while to do some work, promising not to be long, leaving the tv on. Some reality dating show she used to enjoy in a past life. Her actual life. That girl is dead, she died a bloody and gruesome death, and no one gave a shirt about her. She sucked so much that she had to die a second time in a cold, lonely cell at the hands of a psychopathic demon. Whatever she was now was not the same stupid, selfish bench.

She used to be able to eat a cookie, snatch it off a plate, didn’t matter if it was hers or not, no one passes up a cookie when its in arms reach. She used to be able to think for herself.

She knows better now. She remembers her lesson.

_You are nothing. You are a hole. You only need to be filled with one thing._

Just one thing. It sure isn’t baked goods.

This is a test Michael has left her. Has to be. Teach her to be Good. Prove to him that she’s learned to be.

Her hands shake, curled in front of her chest, stomach rumbling. Maybe if she passes the test, if he comes out and sees that she’s restrained herself and remembered her place, she might get a cookie for real?

It seems to work. She’s not sure.

When he finally comes out, he glances at the plate, then at her, where she’s cowering back in the corner of the room, twitching and whimpering, as if expecting the snacks to start attacking her. She catches his gaze and he doesn’t look happy. Or angry. He looks…She can’t tell. It’s a face he usually has, the same expression she remembers seeing since he found out she wasn’t a perfect, charitable lawyer hero.

His greatest failure. That’s what he’d called her. She had joked it off at the time. The words stung deeper now. Has she let him down again? A small cry leaves her. She’s trying, damn it…She doesn’t know what to do, he won’t tell her! How is she supposed to know?!

Her hands are tugging at her hair, curling herself inward, wanting to shrink into nothing.

She doesn’t notice him pick the plate up. She doesn’t notice him walk over to her.

It’s only when she feels a sudden warm weight brush against her side that she notices him sit down on the floor beside her. He offers the plate out to her. Just try one, he coaxes.

“I value your criticism, you know.” He tells her with the faintest of smiles.

Is it because she was Good? Is it because she remembered and wasn’t a greedy bench?

She’s unable to ask. But she knows that he is saying she can have one now. She’s not being battered, her bones aren’t crunching, her muscles aren’t being torn. It’s not bad.

Her trembling fingers pick up one of the ones with the most chocolate in. They’ve cooled by now but still feel soft. Must be magic. He watches her eat, his hand moving around her wrist, long fingers guiding her back down to earth like a child catching the string of a loose balloon. The room begins to solidify again around her, bringing her back to her new, softer and sweeter cell. To her new owner…No. Not…Never that. Her…friend?

She chews the sugary dough in her mouth, savoring the texture as well as the sweetness, before letting it glide down her throat.

“What d’you think?” He asks her, genuinely curious; “More cinnamon next time? I don’t really get the nut-meg but all the videos say it gives the best kick.”

She doesn’t have the verbal ability to leave a decent review. All she can do is gingerly reach out for another cookie, which Michael happily provides. It’s all rather lovely, the warm dough pleasantly settled in Eleanor’s stomach when the plate is empty, Michael’s hand stroking her shoulder. A sweet, innocent moment, until Eleanor ruins it by leaning her head down to try to suck him off as a thank you.

Then her caretaker is all rushing, long limbs, hands pushing away, backing as far from her as he can in the small house. Eleanor presses her face to the wall, wishing she would just disappear. She’s aware what she’s become. That’s the worst part.

*

Eleanor’s palms press against the floor to hold herself up, Trevor’s hands gripping at the small bunches he forced her to tie her hair into. She hadn’t wanted to. She knows she looks ridiculous. But ridiculous was better than having it all ripped out. As much as it leaves her feeling defeated, she’s smart enough to choose humiliation over gruesome agony.

“What a good, dumb slut. Didn’t take too long, did it?” He tugs her closer, making sure every inch of him is inside her mouth.

The Britney Spears schoolgirl blouse he’s forced her into squeezes at her chest as she tries to breathe normally. The skirt leaves nothing to the imagination, clearly showing to anyone who came in the red lashes across her ass and thighs from her recent ‘tutoring’.

Eleanor had no objection to the odd, light spank during sex before, whether she was the one taking it or giving it out. But never this. She had done her best to bite her tongue the first ten swats but after that, the tears had fallen, and she’d screamed as it felt as though he was never going to stop. She was surprised she had any skin left on the back of her legs.

Never again. Fuck, never again.

She’ll take his disgusting demon cock if it means no more pain.

And that’s when her brain begins the process of shifting into that logical but self-destructive mentality. Don’t fight. Obey. Be a good girl and it won’t be quite so bad as it could be.

He said he likes it when she puts up a fight. Maybe if she plays it placid then he’ll get bored.

He might call Michael…tell him he can have her back? No, that’s a stupid, fucking thought, which she quickly gets rid of. Michael made his choice. He didn’t want her in his perfect little town. No room for filthy intruders like her among the cream of the crop. But maybe Trevor will give her to another demon, one who isn’t so bad. Because, seriously, who can be worse than The Worst?

Eleanor tries to play it cool. Seductive. Pretend to be the broken, horny, eager slut he tells her that she is. When he’s finished fucking her mouth, she gets to her feet and saunters closer to him, hips swaying, tongue smoothing slowly along her bottom lip as she bats her eyelashes at him.

“More, please, Mr. Trevor?” Eleanor puts on her best bimbo voice; “I would like another lesson. I’ve been so very…naughty.”

His lips curve upwards as he looks her up and down, letting her approach. He smirks down at her, a finger running up the inside of her thigh.

“Oh, would you now, my little trash baby?” He whispers.

“Mmm hmm…I want-.” Eleanor tries again before a stinging slap to her cheek silences her.

And then he’s on her again, face red with fury, shoving her against the wall and pinning her wrists either side. She does her best to struggle, taken off guard by his sudden shift in temper, like the flip of a coin, her blood running cold as she hears him laugh over her.

“Lesson number two.” Trevor hisses at her, “Whores don’t get to decide what they want. Whores don’t get to choose. Whores get told what is best for them and they take it.”

He snaps both her wrists in one movement. Eleanor screams again.

He then kicks both her ankles so hard that they twist in the wrong way, making her fall to the floor, writhing in searing pain in all of her limbs.

“Now! Let’s review what we’ve learned today.” Trevor asks, standing over her; “Lesson number one…Who are you?”

She screams at him, spits up at him, rabid and furious, her hands and feet completely fucked up.

He claps his hands and suddenly all her bones are being twisted and snapped and pulled in no way that any human would be able to live through. Her whole body feels as though it’s being set on fire and electrocuted at the same time, the amount of agony coursing through her, jolt by jolt, break by break.

When it’s finally over, Trevor leans over her, pinching her mouth between his thumb and forefinger.

“Lesson number one…Who are you?”

She goes still.

She whimpers. Oh, God.

*

Fifty lines. She can count that high. She’s not a total dumbash.

Never do more than fifty. Never try to win favor by extra credit. That will just earn her another caning for clearly not following strict instructions. Or not being able to count. Or some other reason he can think of to hurt her.

There’s no pens or pencils in this new cell. She’s done her best to look. She hasn’t dared to peek into the kitchen drawers to find one, or even a knife. She’s pretty sure that wouldn’t be allowed. Clumsy, useless bench isn’t allowed near such things, might hurt herself. Not allowed to do that. Not allowed to make decisions. She’ll get hurt when he decides she should be hurt.

It’s not like she has such a thing as agency anymore.

Her fingernail continues to scrape into the wall, peeling off the paint, until her nail is worn down and she’s writing the lines in blood. She’s up to twelve now. Over a fifth of the way there, that’s how fractions work, right?

“Eleanor, what are you doing?!” A voice exclaims behind her, making her jump.

She turns her head from where she’s crouched on the floor, looking to see Michael standing in her bedroom doorframe, trying not to drop the glass of water he’s holding, looking as if he’s just walked in on a crime scene.

It may as well be one, given the blood on the walls and dripping from her hand.

Her head twitches, looking back to the wall, the words she’s frantically scrawled after waking up in the middle of the night flashing in front of her. The answer to lesson one.

She must never forget.

_NO ONE._

_NO ONE._

_NO ONE._

And so on and so on.

She still has so many to do. Need to get them done by the time he finds her, by the time he comes back. She carries on, using her other fingers, she has more than enough. Michael fades away behind her and she soon forgets that he interrupted her homework.

“Hey! Stop it!” He’s moving towards her, she can hear him. She doesn’t stop, she mustn’t, even when his hands grab for her wrists; “Stop it, I said! Eleanor!”

She shakes her head, almost screeching in response.

Her hands tear themselves from Michael’s hold and she frantically points to the words on the wall. Doesn’t he get it?! She’s trying to study, damn it!

“What are you trying to…” The Architect frowns at the words, then pauses; “…Oh! I see…Oh, shirt.”

Eleanor sighs out in relief. It sounds as if he’s finally catching on, after all this time.

She curls her bleeding fingers to her face, her chest beginning to heave. She wants to curl up again and vanish. This is so much easier when someone isn’t there to see. Isn’t there to judge.

She hears a snap and wonders if one of her fingers is broken again. No, they…still work? The pain in her bleeding digits is gone.

Michael’s hand smooths over her hair; “Eleanor. I need you to do something for me.”

Her eyes swiftly open.

Orders? Yes. Finally! Tell her what to do. What do you forking want, dude?

He smiles at her, touching her face.

“Look at the wall again. Go on. Read the words out.” He tells her, before remembering; “In your head, I mean, you don’t need to…”

They both know what she can’t do. What she lost the right to do.

But she can obey the first part of Michael’s request. She hopes that will start to make him pleased with her. He’ll stop looking at her with so much disappointment. He’ll stop acting like it’s wrong when she behaves just as a good whore should when trying to say thank you.

She turns back to the wall, to her lines. Then she blinks at the words, chest tight with confusion.

Wait. That can’t be right…

That isn’t what she wrote. She glances at her hands. The blood is gone, fingernails back to normal. Those words. They look almost alien to her before the frazzled wires in her brain make the connection. She shudders back, as if the words are about to jump out and grab her, but it’s only Michael’s hands that catch her, hold her securely, palms stroking down her arms.

“What do they say? Hmm?”

Her lips open and close without any sound except her tiny gasps.

“That’s who you are. It’s who you’ve always been. Nothing has changed. Got it?” Michael whispers.

The words are impossible. The words are a lie. They have to be. But why would Michael lie? Can angels tell lies to begin with? A wave of exhaustion hits her and she crumples, letting Michael wrap her up in his arms, pulling her in close. She closes her eyes as the tears fall fast, the new words on the wall flickering like a dying light bulb in her brain:

_Eleanor Shellstrop_

*

He claps his hands. Eleanor cries out as the bones in her leg snap into place, one by one, clicking and twisting and fusing. Even when he ‘fixes’ her, it never feels like healing.

“Get up. Come gimmie some sugar.” Trevor orders her.

Eleanor tests her toes, rotating her ankles, making sure she knows how they still work.

He had left her on the floor for hours, completely immobile, a small bundle of broken bones under purple flesh. She had pleaded to be allowed to pass out. To stop. Feeling. Just for a moment.

Stop everything.

“Ten seconds, bitch. You wanna make me mad again? ‘Cause you’re doing a bang-up job!”

Oh, fork no. Not after that. She can’t take that again, not yet. It’s too much to risk.

Her hand feels for the nearest wall to steady herself, legs shifting, weary to put weight on her feet. Her lower body especially is still racked with pain.

Just choose the fuck, Eleanor. Let him get his rocks off rather than throw them at you.

Knees buckling, she makes her way over to him. She won’t try to flirt this time. Won’t try to act as though she wants it. She’s learned that lesson. He wants to see her resist. He wants to know she doesn’t enjoy one iota of what he does to her. That’s the fun for him. The fact that she has no choice, that this is the lowest she could fall, and that there’s fuck all she can do to stop him.

A finger touches the underside of her chin.

“What…the fuck…are you doing?” He asks, a frown forming.

Eleanor blinks. What? What did she do now?!

“I…You told me to…” Her voice falters, unused, before it hits her.

Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap.

She falls down to her knees. He never said she could walk! He ordered her to…God damn it, how could she be so stupid?!

Quickly, thinking on her bent feet, she reaches for his zip. She can fix this!

Her fingers fumble to release him and she quickly takes him in. It’s not like she needs to work him up. He’s always ready. Always in the mood, aroused by the blood-chilling screams that echo around him in his day to day. Eleanor knows she’s probably digging herself deeper. He didn’t order her to do this, after all, not specifically.

But then his hand is on her head and he’s thrusting into her, stretching her lips apart as he holds her there, making her gag and splutter. Nails scratch into her scalp.

When he’s finally done and pulls out, he orders her to swallow. She does. She licks her lips.

It’s like drinking bleach without the poison. She clenches her stomach. Don’t be sick!

Her shoulders are shaking with nerves, so unsure of the consequences of what comes next. He zips himself up and then kneels down. She keeps her head lower, knows better than to look at him. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him raise his hand, palm gliding through the air. She squeals and cringes, bracing herself for impact, for the slap.

He stops barely an inch from her face. Then he laughs, giving her a cheek a soft pat.

“Well done, baby cakes! Looks like we’re getting somewhere.”

Trevor stands up and leaves the cell.

She stays in her spot, small and still, for as long as possible, letting the latest lesson sink in. She’s not being hurt. She’s cold and starving and lonely and disgusting. But there’s no pain. Because she was good. Because she did as she’d been taught. Served her purpose.

Another thread in her mind is undone. She looks at her feet beneath her.

Lesson three, he had told her as he’d watched her convulse in her bone breaking torture only twenty minutes ago. Whores don’t walk. Whores crawl. Whores do not look up. Where do you belong?

“Down.” She reminds herself, curling up in the corner, “Down.”

She had tried to stand on her own when he left her last time. He had entered a few moments later, enough time for her to quickly get to the floor, but it was too late. He’d seen. He always sees. He’s probably watching her right now, making sure she behaves.

Never walk again. Don’t even try. Stay down. Down.

There’s a good girl.

*

The sea water is always the perfect temperature, even when it starts to get late. She might ask if she can stay out past sunset. There’s something about swimming in moonlit water which sounds awesome.

She’s sure Michael would say yes, as long as she can stay awake long enough. She’s constantly tired as is, the added exercise of relearning to walk now taking more energy out of her during the day. If nothing else, her sleeping is better, ten hours usually uninterrupted by god forsaken terrors. That might have something to do with her new platonic bedroom buddy always there. She’d rather not test to see which it is just yet.

They’ve been at this for almost a week now. She knows it’s all in her head. Physically, her leg muscles are perfectly healthy, they always were. They don’t need any tough regiment of physiotherapy, though often they will finish by retiring to the living room and Michael massaging her calves and ankles while she relaxes on the sofa. It’s starting to become her favorite part of being here. Yesterday he asked Janet for some essential oils and she could almost believe she was at a spa. How were his fingers so good at knowing all the tight areas of stress and tension? Another YouTube tutorial or was he using those extra senses of his he’d mentioned before?

If she was any good at talking, she would ask. They’re still working on that. Sometimes they will do it during the massage, if she’s not too dopey by then, spent on walking and slightly high from the heavy, fructose scents filling the room. One of the first things Michael wanted her to say was her name. It took a lot of effort, stupid parents giving her so many syllables, but she could manage it after a few tries. How often is she going to need to use that in conversation? Michael knows who she is. He knows everything about her, so why would she…

The glare from the sun catches her eyes, sunglasses off while she paddles. A memory from a few weeks back flashes in front of her. Two words scrawled in blood that answer her question.

“Ready to get out? I made smoked salmon sandwiches, extra cream cheese.” Michael tells her, exposed ankles beneath his rolled-up jeans being lapped by the waves.

Eleanor gives a hum. That sounds incredible right now. He knows that seafood is the key to her heart, even if she’s currently taking a break from shrimp.

She puts her feet down and starts to carefully trudge her way out of the water, hands forward to keep her balance. It’s a lot easier than the first time. She doesn’t need Michael to be within arms reach to catch her. One step at a time. There’s no rush. She takes a breath and keeps moving, wobbling only slightly as the pressure of the water lets her go and she’s standing on her own.

Something then makes her flinch. A splash of water against the side of her head.

She turns to Michael, frowning with confusion.

The angel returns her look of bewilderment. He glances around, as if trying to spot the source. The waves are far too gentle for it to have reached her from the ocean. Michael shrugs, hands behind his back.

Eleanor goes to put her sunglasses back on before another spurt hits her, this time on her back.

The short burst of cold makes her squeal in surprise. What the…?!

She glances back at Michael and notices at last that…Oh. He’s gotta be kidding her. Eleanor opens her mouth as she sees him carrying two super soaker guns in each hand, a rather devious look on his face. Is he serious?! Did he really just…?

Michael grins and tosses one of the guns towards her, letting it land in the sand a metre from her feet.

Gingerly, not wanting to topple over, she bends down to pick it up.

When was the last time she held one of these? Marlene’s bachelorette party, two thousand and nine? A smile creeps across her face as she remembers how they had all been arrested for spraying a table filled with boorish white businessmen on their phones, drenching their Samsungs as well as their suits. The guns had been a lot more flimsy than what this one felt like as she tries to give it a pump.

When she glances over at Michael, she wonders if he knows the memory she instantly associates with these? Was pissing off a load of adulterous, rich pricks something that lost points or gained them? The look in his eyes tells her that afterlife points are the last thing on his mind.

He simply points and shoots, the burst of cold refreshing after the soak in sun kissed water.

Motherforker!

He is going…down!

Eleanor pumps her gun more and aims it at him, soaking his shirt. She will get him out of those clothes and come join her in some bathing trunks one day! Michael laughs, and steps back, making Eleanor have to dart forward for her stream to keep hitting him.

“Gotta be quicker than that, Shellstrop!” He taunts her.

She dares to give him a glare, her teeth clenched.

Oh, it’s on like Donkey Kong, angel bud!

She walks faster, balls of her feet shifting quickly through the hot sand, pumping as she moves quicker, not letting Michael get away, the son of a bench! He turns and shoots her again, as if he were James freakin’ Bond, almost catching her in the eye. Some of it drips onto her tongue and she realises…did he fill the guns with cream soda?

That’s so random. So pointless but fitting to his warped little Heaven.

He leads her underneath the pier and now it’s a little more of a challenge as they have the pillars to hide behind. Eleanor sneaks and slides around, using her smaller frame to her advantage, hearing Michael lumber around on those long legs of his, searching for her.

“Come on, you sneaky little human. You might’ve outwitted me in town for all those months but I know your tricks now. You think I can’t smell you? You think I can’t see every trace of your-.”

Eleanor cuts off his boasting by jumping out from behind him and giving him a full blast of sugar water. It completely soaks him, shirt clinging to his body, making it all the worse for himself when he turns around to face her, water dripping over the lenses of his specs.

He curses her, playfully, and shoots her back. Her soaker is empty – she has to book it!

She runs out from under the pier, making her way towards the beach house, halfway there when her ankle gives way and she stumbles, falling into the soft sand. There’s no pain. No disastrous fallout. Just a clump of course sand needing to be spat out of her mouth.

“Ha! Gotcha!” Michael says, triumphant, standing over her with his gun raised; “Any last words? Or should I say, first words?”

She glowers at him. Very funny. Although, actually, she does have one word.

“P-paperclip!” She gasps and points to the ground, next to his foot.

Michael looks down, eyebrows darting up; “Where?!”

Eleanor grabs his gun and pulls the trigger, catching Michael off guard and making him splutter. When he tries to pull his gun back, she tugs him down onto the sand with her, two completely drowned rats curling beside each other, laughing away like a couple of holiday idiots.

It takes almost a minute for Eleanor to recognise the sound coming out of her. Then she claps her hands over her lips.

Fork. Damn it, what is she…?

She tries to look away. No one wants to hear. How dare she even…?

Michael’s fingers touch her hand. He gently helps her lower it away from her face, uncovering her mouth, the remnant of her smile still present, if only somewhat stilted at her sudden memory.

“I think you won that round.” He tells her, holding her hand in his.

Something tells Eleanor that he’s not just talking about the water gun battle. But yeah, she also beat his ash in that. It’s been one victory after another this week. She should be getting some trophies.

Michael gives her a wink, “Don’t get cocky. I’ll get you back, Eleanor Shellstrop, my greatest nemesis.” He gives her a dangerous look to match the shirt eating smirk on her face; “Next time I will hunt you to the ends of the universe, there will be no mercy, I will-.”

“Your forty-minute timer is done, Michael.” Janet makes a quick appearance to say.

“Oh, thanks!” His upbeat speech returns and he helps Eleanor up; “Dessert is almost ready, I made that chocolate fudge cake you were eyeing in the recipe book.”

Her face feels set to burst with delight. Best nemesis ever.

Michael steadies her as she gets back on her feet. Her legs are tingling all over. When was the last time she ever ran? Probably when she tried to… She’ll feel it tomorrow. It’s totally worth it. He owes her an awesome massage for putting her through a trial like that with no heads up.

“Piggyback?” He offers.

Eleanor shakes her head. Her eyes scan him up and down, his soaked shirt clinging to his bod up to his damp hair, partly sticking across his forehead. They’re both still a little out of breath. She can’t imagine he gets time to do much running either, they could both do with more opportunities like this to blow off steam. Let loose and mess around like a couple of kids.

His eyes follow hers down to his clothes.

“Right. Janet, a new shirt please.” He asks and she presents a folded white one in her arms.

Eleanor quickly snatches it and shrugs it over her head.

“Hey!” Michael frowns.

She laughs again, freely this time, turning and running. Running towards the patio, careful not to trip as she takes the concrete steps. When she reaches the top, she turns and looks down at him, a triumphant smile on her face. She won that race as well. Another victory.

Michael stops at the bottom and glances up at her. The semi-amused, semi-annoyed smirk on his face shifts into something new. He blinks, his lips parted, looking at her as though she’s stolen the wind from his sails. Eleanor stays still. His unbuttoned shirt hangs from her shoulders like a robe, damp hair sprinkled and knotted with sand dangling to her shoulders. She needs a shower. Is that why he’s looking at her like that? Is something wrong?

“Wha…?” She asks, feeling a little awkward as he continues to stare; “…G-give up?”

The angel huffs and smiles; “I suppose so.”

She laughs, confused but endeared, shaking her head. Michael can be such a dork at times. She walks over to the table were her sandwich is waiting, the smell of the cake waiting for her afterwards drifting in from the kitchen as Michael goes in to check on it.

The look her angel buddy had given her sticks in her mind’s eye. Once upon a time, she had thought she knew what that look meant. Part of her still does. But that’s impossible.

Suddenly the food in front of her loses its appeal. The ache arises in her legs sooner than expected.

Fork. How many lessons did she fail just now?

Running. Laughing. Taking what wasn’t hers. About to consuming something other than cock to the list.

Despite the sun’s rays and not a single cloud in the sky, everything suddenly feels dark.

Cold.

_You did that. You ruined it. He heard you laugh._

_Whores are seen. Whores are touched. Not heard._

_Whores don’t walk or run._

_Whores-_

Eleanor wraps her arms around herself and squeezes at the crisp material of Michael’s shirt. The voice fades. The beach begins to brighten up again. She takes a breath and then another.

She picks up her sandwich and takes a bite, revelling in the smooth texture of the salmon on her tongue. As she swallows the first piece, she laughs, only for herself this time, confusing Michael when he eventually comes out to join her. She wishes she could tell him what’s so forking funny. About how she made the voice disappear on her own. How she dodged a panic attack without needing to call for him to hold her.

A third win in one day. Go, Shellstrop. She’s on a roll.

*

He slices the blade across her throat. There’s the tiniest of cries but there’s no way to scream.

The blood trickles all the way down her body, over her naked breasts, her stomach littered with scars, her bruised hips and thighs, until it finds its way to her toes hanging in mid-air. Then it starts.

The dripping.

She feels his hand grip her chin again. She can’t see him for the moment. He’s taken away her eyes for today. That’s the punishment for daring to look at him. As if she was his equal. Stupid bitch.

“Listen to that sound, cutie. This is your next lesson.” He whispers, so soft, twisting her up; “Every drip is gonna be a reminder of why you’re here. Because you sucked. Because no one wanted you. No one loved you. No one will ever come for you. You are alone. You are no one. You have no one.”

He forces her to kiss him. She tries not to scream against his mouth, her broken teeth from where he punched her still caning sharply in bleeding gums.

His mouth brushes against her ear; “Laterz!”

She feels his hot breath leave her. The door slams shut.

Her head feels increasingly light. Not that it means anything other than the constant feeling of wanting to be sick. There’s a hunger like none she’s known before. It’s like her insides have been replaced with smoke. The silence, the darkness, the boredom, it’s almost as crushing as the kicks and punches.

Drip.

No one wants her. She’s lucky Trevor visits her at all.

Drip.

No one loves her. She’s lucky Trevor wants to touch her.

Drip.

No one is coming. Not now. Not ever. She’s lucky she…Oh, fuck.

*

_I'm so scared that I'll never be put back together._

*

He watches the woman hang from the ceiling, wrists held above her head, feet dangling a good six feet from the puddle of her own blood on the ground. Tears leak from her hallowed out eye sockets, weakened sobs echoing out around the cell. He wants to rush in and save her. Again. Quicker, this time. He wants to snap her wounds away, give her back her tongue and her eyes. It’s just a video. It’s too late now. He has to turn the TV off.

Too much. He can’t bear to watch anymore.

He had requested the video footage months ago, back when Eleanor was still in her early stages, barely able to move out of fear of doing the wrong thing, unable to do so much as look Michael in the eyes. It was difficult enough to hear her screams from before, constantly replaying in his head when he was alone. He never wanted to have to see it. But he had to. He had to know the extent of what Trevor had done to her. Work out how to re-condition her.

His methods were brutal. Sick. There didn’t seem to be a limit to what the demon was willing to do to indulge his twisted gore kink.

Michael had no right to judge. He had performed similar treatments of humans in the past.

But even then, he never remembered…getting _high_ off it the way Trevor seemed to. Inflicting pain seemed to give the demon a kick better than any ounce of cocaine. It seemed to keep him constantly horny and ready to spear his cock in whatever orifice he decided on entering that day. It was his addiction.

And Eleanor seemed to have become his favorite drug.

It was too much to ever watch everything that happened to her in one sitting. Michael had to do it in increments, finding time to sneak away and shut the office door. It had begun as morbid curiosity, necessary research to help his project, before becoming a chore that seemed to mentally drain him with each viewing. He tried to put it off each day but there was a part of him that started to feel as though he owed it to Eleanor to suffer vicariously through her. He couldn’t ask her to relive it for him, to tell him each detail of what happened.

Why should it be so difficult to watch? How many times had he seen humans being tortured before without so much as wincing?

He’d stopped looking uncomfortable when the other demons made fun of him for it. When his boss threatened to demote him for being a whimp.

Thank Hell that one of his powers was lying.

The more time he spent with Eleanor, the tougher it was to see her suffer, the more he seemed to feel every lash and punch against his own body. Maybe she hit the nail on the head about that propinquity garbage. That’s what’s ruined him. He knew that caring for a human would be a struggle but he never imagined it leading to…this.

Leading to what they had done in this office the night before.

When Michael had touched her all over, triggering all those little secret switches on her skin to make her moan and shudder, filling her up with pleasure, he also seemed to have absorbed some of the trauma she was carrying in her muscles, in her very blood. It was as if she was part of him now. Not just in his head but in his body, his real body, not merely the skin suit.

He knows the lessons Trevor installed in her. He’s done his best to undo them, one by one.

But recovery is not a straightforward line of one point to the next. It’s not a ladder either. Much like time in the afterlife, it looped around and doubled back and forward again, like a Jeremy Bearimy. Eleanor could be singing her heart out on a karaoke stage one night, the next something could happen to make her want to hide under the table. He can’t see what is going through her damaged head, not unless he sees what most likely triggers her turn, the secret to helping her hidden in the footage.

So, Michael keeps watching. He does his best to keep his detached, pragmatic head on and study as much as he can as that forking sick demon tortures the woman that is all he cares about now.

*

It had been a fantastic dream. Or rather a hallucination, as she knows she can’t sleep here. She will take what she can get. Any excuse for her brain to escape. To get to live in a fantasy of peace and freedom and affection, if only for a short while.

She can feel it slipping away from her now, at long last. Try as she could to cling to the delusion.

It’s time to wake up. Go back to where she belongs.

The world is splintering around her. The ocean dissolving, the sand crumbling upward, stars snuffing out and darkening the sky. She can barely feel the concrete of the patio step beneath her. That’s because it was never there, dumbash. Very soon, the filter will go as well, and if nothing else she will be able to hear herself curse in her head. It’s the one simple pleasure the Bad Place provides.

A silhouette kneels in front of her. He’s found her.

She can’t move.

Not that she would be stupid enough to run. She remembers what she is. What her limits are.

“Who are you?” The dark figure asks, her eyes unable to give him a face.

She should know who he is. The voice doesn’t match up with what her memory was ready to hear.

“…No one.” She blinks.

So obedient. Such a good slut.

“Fork…no.” The voice responds, sounding as though it’s about to cry. She frowns.

Was that the wrong answer? She’s sure she got it right. She knows it’s been a long time since she studied. She’s been distracted. She’s been disobedient and wilful. A naughty bitch. She knows she is due a punishment. Just get it over with.

There’s another sob and she shudders. Please. Don’t…cry, dude. That’s not supposed to happen.

Gentle hands are touching her arms, her face, caressing her hair. Soft lips brush against her forehead and arms are being wrapped around her. Right or wrong answer, she’s certain that her lessons never involve anything like this. They’re never. Warm. Never nice. Never safe.

“Please, Eleanor. Remember.” The voice whispers as she’s rocked, back and forth; “You’ve come so far. Don’t let him knock you back now.” Fingers link in hers; “You can do this. You can win.”

Win? When has she ever won? She lost at her own afterlife.

She won in the dream. The sweet, blissful dream that her mind is still barely hanging on to.

“Who are you?” He asks again, thumbs stroking below her eyes.

“I…”

There’s a flash of blue behind sheets of glass. It jump starts something in her mind that had recently short-circuited. She jolts and reaches her hands up, finding the ones holding her head.

Pieces of her surroundings begin to slot back into their natural place.

“Holy shirt…Michael!” She whimpers, clinging to his hands, feeling as though she’s about to be lost at sea; “Michael, I can’t…I don’t know where I am!”

“Shh, it’s okay, don’t worry about that now, just look at me.” He tells her, eyes focused on hers; “Take a breath. Tell me who you are.”

She does as she’s told. Because he’s her friend. More than that. Not because she fears him.

“El…Eleanor…Sh-Shellstrop…fork!” Tears start to leak, her hand nearly crushing Michael’s.

His face swims fully into view before her. The nauseating, floating sensation leaves as she plummets back down to reality. It feels as though she’s been dragged back through several dimensions. A literal jetlag from Hell.

She focuses on her breathing, on the rise and fall of her own chest, clutching onto him.

Her body collapses against his chest, arms sliding around her, voice murmuring sweet words that help reform the world around her into being. She asks him, how long she was out for this time? Twenty minutes, he says. It scared the shirt out of him. Eleanor could tell that by how cracked his voice had sounded. Fork, that was a bad one, considering how few of them she has these days.

“What if, one day, I just zone out and never come back?” She asks him, once her breathing has evened out, and he’s wrapped a blanket around her; “What if I forget ever leaving that place? What if I…forget you?”

It scares her almost as much as being taken back to the Bad Place for real.

Michael tugs her onto his lap, lips pressed to the side of her head.

“I’ll just have to get Janet to shrink me down, put me inside that freaky brain of yours, and pull your memories back out, won’t I.” He promises her.

“That’s the most disgusting romantic thing anyone has said to me.” She manages a smile.

Lesson number four. No one wants her. No one will come. She has no one.

That doesn’t match with what is happening right now. It doesn’t gel with the obvious fact that there’s an angel holding her in his arms, as tight as she can be comfortable in, clearly terrified at the thought of losing her. The angel who came to save her despite the fact she didn’t belong in his zone of Heaven. The angel who can’t seem to stop kissing her.

Eleanor leans her head up to meet Michael’s lips, drinking in the taste of his mouth against hers, his knuckles gently stroking down her cheek. She snuggles beneath the folds of the blanket, huddled safe in his embrace, thinking to herself that it’s time she learned a new lesson.

Lesson number five.

Forget everything that son of a bench taught her.

She might not pass the final exam any time soon. But she has the perfect study partner to help her along the way. If all else fails, they can ace it Shellstrop style. They might just need a lot more booze.

-

_When my smile gets old and faded,_  
_Wait around, I'll smile again._  
_Shouldn't be so complicated,_  
_Just hold me again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a hard week I needed some catharsis and whump / hurt-comfort. These chapters will vary in genre and tone, depending on what I feel like writing, what moments from their time I want to expand on. The lyrics are from Matchbox Twenty's "Bent".


	3. Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eleanor has a slightly nerdy love. It's a good thing Michael knows all her passions already.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Her fingers paw lightly against the glass as she counts them. They greet her from the little glimpse of the sky she finds between the train station roof and the skyline of the town. It’s only four stars but it’s more than she ever thought she would see again. Eleanor can’t believe she used to take such simple wonders for granted.

If she leaves, if she makes her way off the train, she can go outside and get a good look at the open night sky. It’s all waiting for her, barely a couple of inches away. Two twinkies, maybe?

A hand covers hers and plucks her fingers away before she can count anymore.

“Come on, Eleanor. Time to go.” Michael says, sadly. Apologetic.

She shakes her head. No. Please. Just a little bit longer.

The fingers clutch tight at her hand and give it a rough pull in the opposite direction. Eleanor topples out of her seat with a sharp cry, doing her very best to wrench her hand free of his grip. She doesn’t want to go back! Please, no!

But Michael sighs and continues walking, dragging her along behind him through the empty train carriage.

“I gave you every chance, Eleanor. You just keep letting me down. There’s nothing more I can do. You don’t belong here.” He doesn’t raise his voice. He’s not angry.

Just. Disappointed.

It cuts her deeper than any knife Trevor sliced her with.

She cries out, unintelligible whimpering, her other hand reaching to hold onto whatever she can to stop him dragging her off the train. When that fails, her grip constantly slipping, she starts tugging at his trouser leg instead. Don’t do this, please! She’ll be good! She’ll do whatever, be whoever, he wants her to be. Just don’t send her back!

He pauses in his steps and looks down at her. His lip twinges with disgust.

“Stop making a fool of yourself. You’re only making this choice easier for me. Boy, what was I thinking? A filthy piece of shirt like yourself, belonging in my Good Place? All you do is make everything dirty. Well, not my neighborhood. I won’t have it.”

Eleanor screams, tears streaming down her face, her hand batting weakly at Michael’s crushing hers. Her body goes limp, sobs wracking from her chest as he drags her along, bare knees rubbing painfully against the carriage carpet. She tries to kick them out but it’s as if she has no feeling below her waist. She’s paralysed.

She’s already lost what she had started to regain. Little by little. So much effort, undone in a flash, with a simple flip of Michael’s mind in deciding what to do with her.

One last cry, a final tug. She’s on her knees. Begging.

Please. Isn’t he her friend? He promised her she could stay. What happened to not breaking promises to friends?

“We’re not friends, Eleanor.” He responds, reading her mind; “I could never be friends with a lying slut like you. Oh yes, I know what he did. I know how you secretly liked it.”

No. No, that’s not true! That’s just what Trevor says but he’s lying, damn it!

“Get the fork out of my sight. You’re Trevor’s little bench now. Hope you can be worth something to him, at least.” His words become nastier as the nightmare draws to a close, his face losing all semblance of Michael’s gentle compassion, eyes twisting into snake-like pupils filled with anger.

Before she can utter one more plea, he tosses her out of the train. She falls down into a gaping pit where starlight becomes nothing but a myth.

*

Ow! Son of a bench!

He’s pulled out of a dream involving him getting to perform to a crowd of people at his own concert. It had been something of a relief to exit out of that one, considering it ended with him firstly forgetting how to play and secondly that he wasn’t wearing his skin suit. He’d been grateful to not have to go through the horrific vision of scalding his imaginary fans with the juice from his tentacles. Was that the demon equivalent of standing up in class to realize you’re naked? He feels bad for making humans relive that nightmare in real time during many a torture session.

What Michael wasn’t so grateful for was how he’d been woken up, by a harsh kick to his shin. He winces, eyes still closed, glasses gone. Sleeping was still a strange new experience for him. The dreams were difficult to get used to as they varied so widely in genre. It was like if Netflix had a ‘shuffle’ feature. No doubt he did feel more energized and clearer headed during the days, more than he’d felt in the last several millennia. Funny how the time he seemed to ‘waste’ sleeping seemed to offer him more time to think and reflect on things he’d never given himself time to before. 

Not that he’ll admit it to anyone, not even the human who sleeps beside him every night now. She’s always out of it before he falls asleep anyway and he usually wakes before her.

Until tonight.

Michael rubs at his eyes and reaches for his glasses on the nightstand. He doesn’t remember taking them off. Strange. He shrugs it off and opens his eyes.

He sees Eleanor sat on the edge of the bed, dead still, if one can excuse the pun. The only movement seems to be her hands fisting tightly onto duvet beneath her. It’s hard to tell if she’s asleep or not from this angle. Michael knows it’s best not to touch her if it’s somewhere in between. She’s already kicked him once tonight, he’d rather not be slapped as well. He slowly props himself up onto his elbow.

“Eleanor?” He says, softly, not too loud as not to startle her; “Are you awake?”

No response.

He’s not worried. He can usually coax her into lying back down without needing to startle her when she’s in this state.

“C’mon, sleepy head. Lay back down.” He tries not to make them sound like orders but the direct instructions usually work. They don’t seem to be having an effect this time.

Her shoulders are starting to shake. Michael sits up and peers around.

Her eyes are wide open, staring out at the star-speckled sky outside her window, decorating the navy space above the ocean. She looks terrified, face white as a sheet, tears sliding down her cheeks and falling to her feet like tiny diamonds catching the moonlight.

Michael can’t resist reaching out to touch her hand.

“Hey-.”

She flinches, violently, at his touch, falling off the bed and stumbling onto the floor. There’s a combination of human fear and animalistic desire for survival on her face as she stares up at him, shuffling away from the bed. She crosses her arms over her chest, shifting into defence mode. Shirt. Michael feels a weight within him. It’s been a while since she looked at him like that. He’d hoped they were past this.

“Eleanor. You know it’s me. You know I’d never hurt you.” Well, not physically. And not emotionally, if he can help it. Sure, he might need to let her endure the odd psychological torment once they’re back in the neighborhood but…that can be dealt with another time.

It doesn’t matter now. Not here. Nothing matters except the time they have together.

He gets up off the bed and crouches down, putting a good distance between them. He can’t help but feel a sting at the sight of the tears on her face. It might be because he knows, better than anyone, how hard it used to be for Eleanor to cry. How her mother conditioned her not to, with constant guilt trips and stories about how ‘tears were Santa repellent’. Oh, sometimes he wishes he gets to be the one in charge of Donna Shellstrop’s torture when she dies for real. He fails to understand how either of her parents could treat her so awfully. Those bozos wasted fourteen years not appreciating what an incredible daughter they had. Michael has had her in his care for just a few months and she’s turned everything he thought he knew about the universe upside down.

“Did I hurt you? In the dream?” He asks, carefully, watching the realization slowly dawn on her; “If I did, I apologize for what the me in your subconscious did, and I’m disowning him.”

Eleanor exhales and rubs her face, starting to steady her breathing.

“You…” She tries to explain; “You were…g-gonna send me away…S-send me b-back…”

“Now why would I do that? First of all, do you know how difficult those transfer files are to get hold of? You gotta queue in line for forty hours and then they just send you to wait for another form! It’s like the DMV but with _less_ torture.”

She manages a smile and Michael sighs, feeling as though he’s accomplished something. The color returns to Eleanor’s face, visible even in the pale light of the moon.

He dares to reach forward again and brush her cheek with his thumb.

“How about a midnight snack? Complete with a midnight margarita?” He offers. They’re long past caring about sleeping routines and keeping everything simple. Basic.

Eleanor smiles again, leaning into his touch; “Sounds good.”

Ten minutes later, they’re outside sharing a sun lounger on the patio, Eleanor curled up against him underneath a blanket, a plate of s’mores being shared between them.

“The one good thing about camping. And you don’t even need to camp to enjoy them. Basically, fork camping.” Eleanor mumbles, marshmallow sticking between her lips, as she eats.

Michael smirks. Camping would be a good, middle way torture he could try, if need be. Maybe talk her into it one day, make it seem as though it’s something he’s desperate to experience, flash the old puppy dog eyes. She’d hate it at first, sure, that was the point of torture. But it wouldn’t be so bad, not once he found somewhere comfortable for them to settle, made sure there weren’t too many bugs about. And there would definitely be s’mores.

She might even discover she enjoys camping after all. As long as it’s with him. Then it wouldn’t be torture. Michael should really be asking himself what the point of it is then.

“I definitely prefer these over churro dogs.” He confesses to her; “I don’t feel like I need bowel surgery after eating these.”

Eleanor hums a laugh; “You just need to get used to them, get them all flowing in your system.”

“Ah, like smallpox?”

She narrows her eyes at him. It’s good to see that she’s recovered from her nightmare, for the most part. She’s still rather clingy. He’s used to having an Eleanor shaped leech attached to his side after all these months.

The tears are gone, that’s the main thing. She still feels terribly small in his arms. He’s been feeding her up well enough, it’s nothing to do with her weight.

“Feeling better now?” He asks as she sips her drink.

She gives him a non-acquittal hum, cradling the glass in both her hands as she sits up against him.

“Ask me again after ten of these.” She says.

“I’m cutting you off at six.” He reasons, not wanting to be too strict. It’s not like she’s in danger from getting drunk or risking her health. But things can get…messy, as they did the other night he found her half-cut on the kitchen floor.

“Killjoy.” She glowers at him a little, taking another sip; “M’just sick of the stupid nightmares. I’m in Heaven! Why are there even nightmares in Heaven?” She gasps and looks at him; “Unless…holy shirtballs! Is this really the Bad Place?!”

Michael stares at her, his mouth gaping open.

She then bursts into laughter and gives him a shove; “Haha, I’m just screwing with you!”

“Oh. Good. I was about to get really offended there. I’m trying my best, you know.” He manages to bluster, concealing his fear at nearly being found out beneath the humor.

Boy, that was a close one!

“Seriously though, man, the nightmares are a bit of a glitch we could do without.” Eleanor tells him, earnestly.

Michael can’t argue with that; “We can’t interfere with human brains. It would be like thought crimes if anyone had ‘unhappy thoughts’ or if we forced them to always be sated, even asleep.”

“Like that creepy boy from the Twilight Zone who turned people into corn?” Eleanor shudders; “Urgh. Got it. That kid put me off ever being a mom.”

Huh. Michael always thought he was kinda cool. Maybe not.

“Tell me about your dream.” He coaxes, rubbing her shoulder.

She shakes her head, “No, man, I told you the main deal.”

“Eleanor.”

He feels her exhale and she sits up a little.

“I dreamed we were back on the train, just like the night you brought me back. I’m trying to count the stars through the window. Then you grab me and say you’re taking me back there…” She visibly cringes, rubbing the back of her hand; “There, that’s it. Lame, right.”

“Count the stars?”

He sees her blush, “Yeah, well. I hadn’t seen the sky in a while seeing how I don’t think it exists in the Bad Place.”

It does, she’s unaware. It all depends on the sector. Most Bad Place neighborhoods and offices took place in dark, underground areas. Michael’s was probably one of the first to have a clear, blue sunlit sky during the day and bright stars and moonlight at night. He’d took a lot of joy in designing the layout of it all.

“It has nothing to do with you wanting to be an astronaut when you were five?” He needles her.

She looks at him with wide eyes, cheeks flushing red; “How did-? Oh, that god damn file! Look, that was when I thought going into space was just about driving a rocket to the moon like a flying motorbike! It was before I got told you had to be good at math and exercise and be cool with drinking your own urine, all that stuff. And my mom telling me pretty girls can’t be astronauts.”

“All right, I’m not judging…” Michael pretends to clear his throat; “Nerd.”

She shoves the rest of her s’more against his lips. Not that he minds, more for him, he grins as he licks his lips. Kinda cut off her nose to spite her face with that one.

“Look, growing up in that warzone of a house, in a city with so much pollution we were lucky to see an aeroplane at night? What kid didn’t wanna escape to get up there and see all the shiny, cool stuff?” She says, and Michael almost feels guilty.

He comes very close to telling her how much he understands how she felt. There wasn’t even so much as a sky-light in the lava pits where he grew up. When he first got a glimpse of the Universe, his newfound eyes had nearly fallen out of his human suit. It’s one of the few things he can truly empathise with Eleanor about and, once again, he can’t share it openly with her. In her mind, she thinks he was born among the fluffy clouds with all the other dumb angels.

“Well, I can’t take you up there myself but…I can do this.” He snaps his fingers.

The quiet, calm sea suddenly begins to sparkle with thousands of tiny glowing lights, as if he had thrown a landfill of diamonds into the water. Eleanor gasps and jumps up off of his lap, moving to the edge of the patio to look over at the shore. Michael follows, taking their drinks with him. He looks at her, seeing the white glow against her face as she gawps at the scene.

“Woah…That is pretty cool!” She grins and moves down the steps.

Michael watches sprint towards the high tide to get a better look. She dips her bare foot in the star filled water.

“I bet the fish are pissed.” She quips.

“It’s just an illusion. I turned the ocean into a sorta reflecting pool.” He snaps his fingers again; “Go on, walk a bit further out.”

Eleanor frowns at him, as if he’d lost his mind; “I’m not dressed for swimming.”

“Just do it.”

“Michael, I’m not-.”

He moves forward and gives her a shove, knocking her off her feet. She holds her breath as she stumbles back, flailing her arms, waiting to crash into the water while still in her pyjamas. She catches herself with her palm pressed down, Michael watching the realisation dawn on her face when her hand doesn’t pass through the surface. Her mouth stays open in surprise as she tests the firm, slightly spongy and soft floor he’s turned the top layer of water into. Eleanor stands back up, finding her balance again, continuing to test it as she takes a few more steps and remains atop the ocean.

She turns to him and let’s out a laugh.

“You’re a deck, you know that.” She points a finger at him.

Michael takes the jab and walks out to join her.

“And you’re a stargazing nerd.” He throws back at her, nudging her with his elbow.

“A hot stargazing nerd, thank you.”

He doesn’t confirm or deny that one. Eleanor’s confidence seems to be growing back on its own well enough that he doesn’t need to boost her ego with too many compliments on her body. He may as well be pointing out that water is wet, at least when he hasn’t made it solid to use as a walkway for them. He could spend all night telling Eleanor how beautiful she is, how she’s managed to somehow cram her visage into all three of his brains to the point he can’t seem to focus on anything else, but why distract her from her current Heavenly experience?

Michael’s seen enough stars and moons and comets in his existence for them to no longer wow him as they once did. But it feels like looking at them again for the very first time when he watches Eleanor’s face shine as she looks both up and down at the lights surrounding her, seemingly unable to close her mouth.

“Ha, look at me, walking on water!” She beams as they walk out farther; “Bow down to your Lord and Savior, angel bud!”

“I’m pretty sure I’m the one who saved you.” He says, narrowing his eyes.

“Ah, yeah. Because you _like_ me.” She says, swaggering up to him a little.

Michael scoffs; “I don’t think I’ve ever said that was the reason.”

“C’mon! You keep doing all this awesome shirt for me, for no other reason. You must like me just a teensy, little bit.” Eleanor scrunches her nose and, fork, she knows just how to melt him.

“…I don’t dislike you.”

“Ha! I just made you lose points for using a double negative!” She laughs at him before skipping back, taking a look at the dolphins and other sea life swimming beneath her feet, the whole ocean lit up by the fake stars.

Michael is tempted to snap again, just to see her fall and flail in the waves, while keeping himself afloat. Just one little torture, would that be so difficult?

“You know you better stop being annoying, unless you want that dream of yours to become reality.” He warns her, jokingly.

She doesn’t pay his empty threat much attention, her focus captivated by an octopus that floats up close to their view, stretching its tentacles out to the side. Michael feels an odd itch in the fingers of his suit as he watches it glide beneath their feet. He’s almost forgotten what it’s like to have limbs without bones.

The creature floats close to them before quickly shooting back down into the depths.

“Aww, I think I scared it. It was kinda cute.” Eleanor says.

Michael highly doubts that she would have the same reaction to seeing his true form. He takes a seat down on the soft, transparent ground. Eleanor soon moves down to rest beside him, eyes continuing to look between the sparkling lights and the sea-life moving around.

He dares to reach out and touch her hair.

“Feeling better now, sweet girl?”

She gives a hum, her lips twitching a little; “Y’know…You can stop calling me that. It was nice to start with but it’s getting a little…”

“Irritating? Awkward? Embarrassing?”

“Yes, exactly!”

He nods; “A bit like being called an angel?”

Eleanor gives him one of her looks, biting the inside of her mouth as she struggles to come up with a comeback. She can’t argue with him on this one. There’s no way she’s going to relinquish her way of teasing him anymore than he’s going to stop with her. He has to be allowed some torture or he’ll go insane.

She sighs in defeat and leans against his shoulder.

“Fine. You win. En guard.”

“You mean ‘touché’.” He corrects, sliding his arm around her shoulders.

“I mean ‘fork you, Michael’.”

*

She pats down the bodice of her silver gown, fingers brushing over the beaded patterns stitched into the smooth fabric. Eleanor swishes the grey feathery skirt as she checks herself in front of the mirror, admiring her matching heels. Michael had told her to pick out her favorite dress for tonight, to quote ‘as if she were planning to crash a night at the Emmys’. It had taken her a while to choose, considering her wardrobe here may as well be infinite. Eventually she had gone with the same outfit she remembered seeing Taylor Swift wear in one of her music vids and had been dying to know if she could pull it off. No surprise, she killed it.

Janet helps her to do her hair, which is rather pointless as she could give her the style she desires with a mere nod of her head. But this gives them the chance to chat.

“I feel like I’m getting ready to go to Prom.” She tells the not-lady as she curls her hair for her; “Only this time I’m not getting arrested for stealing the limo and driving to Vegas. Wait, is he taking me to simulated Vegas? Is that the surprise?”

“I’ve been told not to reveal anything about what Michael has planned for you tonight, not even hints.” She says, twisting the irons out, finishing the bottom layer of her hair; “Apparently I don’t quite know when to draw the line between subtle clues and full on spoilers.”

That’s true. The last time they asked Janet to suggest a movie she had described one synopsis with the reveal that Nicole Kidman had been a ghost the whole time.

Michael had been super sweet to her all day, more so than usual, and she couldn’t quite work out why. There didn’t seem to be anything about this day that was different than any other day here. Everything seemed to be going well between them, fantastic even, since they took that step from roomies to beach boyfriend and girlfriend. She can easily tell when he’s up to something, she can spot that tricky little spark in his eye when he has a plan but doesn’t want to reveal it just yet.

Let him have his fun, she thinks as Janet finishes putting the final touches to her hair with some spray and an added touch of perfume. She stands, taking one last twirl in front of the mirror.

“How do I look?”

“According to my research on Paris fashion magazines, you would be accepted to be on every cover, as well as a porn magazine in Texas for those with a ballgown fetish.” Janet confirms, brightly.

Eleanor nods; “Can’t get a better compliment than that.”

She leaves her bedroom and walks out to find Michael, dressed sharp as ever in one of his darker suits, still avoiding the bow-ties he used to favour, waiting for her outside, a couple of martinis poured and waiting for them on the table.

“Why hello there.” Eleanor says as she walks through the patio doors; “Haven’t seen you around these parts before. You come here often?”

Michael frowns; “Oh shirt, did I erase your memory?”

“No! I’m doing that whole ‘first meeting’ role-play thing I told you about!” She mutters, already annoyed that he killed the moment.

“Oh! Yeah. Okay, uhm…” he flusters, rolling his shoulders back. He leans against the patio wall; “Yeah, I come by from time to time to get a good look at the view. It seems like I’ve got something even more special to look at tonight.”

“Nice.” Eleanor smirks, moving closer to stand at the other end of the table; “You got a name, silver stranger?”

“I happen to have hundreds. But my friends call me Michael.”

“Well, Michael, I’m Eleanor Shellstrop. An absolute hottie straight out of Arizona and looking to spend the night with the most handsome dude I happen to come across.” She tells him in the sultriest tone she can attempt.

He blushes a little; “I might not be a man but I’ve been told that this skin suit is considered attractive to around eighty per cent of humans. And I’m sure that…Okay, I’m really not getting this, Eleanor. Is amnesia really an aphrodisiac?”

“Forget it.” Eleanor waves off, wishing she had never tried it, but at least she knows now; “Just tell me how pretty I look and then gimmie my surprise.”

“Ah! Now that I can do.”

Michael offers her a glass filled with an espresso martini, no doubt one he made himself. He takes his own and moves around the table, closer to her, his other hand sliding to her waist.

“You look…absolutely gorgeous.” He admires, almost breathless, his eyes moving slowly up her dress to her neckline and finally to her face; “To borrow a phrase; an absolute hottie.”

“Told ya.” She winks at him, her own hand moving to fiddle one of the undone buttons on his collar; “You’re looking rather tasty yourself there, bud. I can’t wait to find out what this big surprise is that you’ve got planned.”

He tilts his head; “Did Janet tell you?”

She grins and shakes her head; “Nope. I just know you all too well. Pretty soon I’m gonna be the one who knows every one of your little secrets.”

“I highly doubt that.” He whispers, looking down at her.

Given how much he loves to share with her about his experiences in the afterlife, it feels like she knows as much as anyone, immortal or not, about Michael the Architect. She knows that’s unlikely, given how long he’s been alive. She likes to hope that, at some point, they will be on an equal playing field with how intimate they know each other, inside and out. For the moment, she enjoys having that mystery left to solve, it makes him ten times sexier.

Eleanor leans her chin up as he moves his lips down and kisses her softly. She feels him suck on her bottom lip, tasting the raspberry gloss she coated them with moments before. He gives a soft hum.

“Sweet enough for you, dude?” She asks, softly, nudging her nose against his cheek.

“Perfect.” He responds, pulling back, eyes still gazing at her in utter adoration; “Drink up. You’re gonna need it.”

She puts her glass to her lip; “Is that so? Now I’m excited.”

The cold caffeine and alcohol slides down her throat as she quickly finishes it and wipes her lips. Michael downs his and puts their empty glasses aside.

He offers out his hands and she willingly takes them, her body thrilling with curiosity.

“You might wanna stand on my feet.” He advises and she does so, trying not to dig her heels into his big black loafers.

He removes his hands from hers and places them on her hips instead.

“Now hold on tight.” He tells her, leaning his mouth down to her ear; “Ten…nine…eight…seven…six-.”

“What the fork are you up to?” Eleanor laughs, a little nervous, clutching onto his jacket.

He continues counting down; “Five…four…three…two…one. Janet, lift-off.”

The ground abandons them, gravity trying to drag her back to it for a moment before she wraps her arms tight around Michael. Eleanor curses, aloud, as the wind rushes against them vertically. She looks down to see the beach deserting them, shrinking farther away, faster than it ever did when she was on the back of a dragon. Her stomach almost leaves her and she’s glad they didn’t have a big meal for dinner because she’d probably be making it rain cress soup across to the neighborhood at this rate.

She’s too frozen with fear and excitement to speak, despite wanting desperately to ask how much higher he plans to take her into the sky, as they pass through the clouds and higher into the atmosphere. All she can do is laugh against his suit as they keep moving up and up and up and-

“Here we are.”

Eleanor blinks as they finally come to a steady stop, surprised at how gentle that climax was considering the velocity they were travelling at. She takes several deep breaths and continues to clutch onto Michael, turning her head to look around at their new surroundings.

Space. They’re standing in the vacuum of space, surrounded by stars and moons and planets. She glances down to see a tiny spec of green and blue, encased in a bubble, that must be Michael’s Good Place. She breaths out another laugh, thinking that flat-earthers would be punching the air to see that.

“Holy shirt…Is this another simulation?” She asks, seeing that Michael is standing on nothing and she dares to step off his shoes, finding an invisible surface.

“Nope. It’s just like I explained to you the other night, about the viewing window. We just passed through it, or at least as far as we can go without leaving this dimension.” He explains, letting go of her hand, letting her take a walk around as she pleases.

Considering that her lungs aren’t exploding or whatever shirt is supposed to happen when you’re in space without a suit, she figures Janet sorted those protective force-fields. It’s disorientating to walk on nothing, but she soon figures out that the floor is where she wants it to be. It’s a bit like walking on water in that way. It’s just like she imagined it as a kid, completely devoid of real world physics and practical dangers.

She loses count of all the stars surrounding them, the nebulae swirling in the distance, seeming so close instead of light years away. It’s almost spooky how quiet it is, how she can’t even hear her heels click on the non-existent floor. The only noise is her own gasps of wonder.

Michael moves up close and takes her hand in his.

“Happy birthday, Eleanor.” He whispers in her ear.

She turns to him, only now looking truly shocked.

“It’s not…Is it?!” She hadn’t even thought about it, or if such a thing even mattered anymore now that she was dead.

“Well, it’s not entirely accurate. But not counting your time in the Bad Place,” as who knows how long she was there for, “Just going by how many days you’ve been in my neighborhood for, yes, it’s been a year since you died and arrived here.”

She’d almost forgotten that she’d died on her birthday. What had been her plans before they were literally derailed by some wayward shopping carts? Eating trash, getting drunk alone and watching trashy T.V until she fell asleep in her own puke. What a sad life she led. She takes a look at her surroundings now, at the all-powerful immortal boyfriend who brought her here, and she starts to wonder if maybe this is why people always made such a big deal about birthday surprises. After all, this is the first she’s ever had.

And she’s pretty sure it tops any other in human history.

Everything starts to get blurry as her chest tightens. Michael reaches a hand up to wipe her tears. She grins back at him, too choked up to even say thank you.

“What d’you wanna do? Go to the moon, jump around a bit? Get closer to the sun? Ride on the back of a comet?” He asks, “The cosmos is your oyster, madam.”

Eleanor feels overwhelmed as it is for the moment before exploring anything else. She moves closer to Michael and takes his hands, leaning up to kiss him again, gratitude boosting her up to meet his lips.

“You’re always giving me stuff, dude. Ever since we got here. I feel like it’s been all about me.” She tells him.

“Well, that’s the idea.” Michael says, smiling down at her; “I told you, didn’t I, all those months ago. I’m here to make you happy. This is your Good Place, Eleanor. You get to have whatever you want.”

She’ll skip challenging him with what is wrong with that statement. Issues such as how she’s not supposed to be in the Good Place and how she doesn’t deserve to get whatever she wants, not according to that damn point system that says she should be suffering for eternity.

It is her birthday, after all.

“But we’re a couple now, genius.” She reminds him with a poke to the chest; “Even a selfish ash like me knows that means I shouldn’t be all take, take, take. You make my dreams come true every forking day and I adore you for it. But I wanna make you happy too, Michael. So tell me, right now, what do you want?”

The older not-man just gives her a soft look, reaching to touch her hair; “Don’t worry about me. I’ve got everything I want right here.”

“Don’t be a sap.” She berates him, “Tell me. Just one thing you’d like us to do. It doesn’t matter if it’s not something I’m into, you gotta tell me. Go on.”

She sees his ears go a little pink, illuminated by the glare of the sun that feels so much closer now.

“I’d quite like to dance with you, Eleanor.” He tells her, a little shy.

She raises an eyebrow; “We dance all the time, man, where have you been?”

“I don’t mean dancing at a club or during karaoke or when I’m beating your ash at DDR on the games console.” He takes the moment to boast. Eleanor rolls her eyes. It’s only because his legs are so damn long, that must somehow give him an advantage; “I mean…proper dancing.”

“Ooh!” She nods, understanding; “Well, jeez, bud, I wish you had told me that weeks ago, I’d have had time to take some lessons. I mean I’ve watched a few episodes of Dancing With The Stars but I can’t say I paid much attention to copying the moves.”

“I’m not expecting a routine. Just…follow my lead.”

He snaps his fingers. Without any sign of a sound speaker, instrumental music starts to play softly, filling up the vacuum of space around them despite the complete lack of atmosphere. Right, magic. She doesn’t recognise the piece. It’s probably from some famous composer whose name she can’t pronounce and that she’s only heard played in copyright dodging commercials or TV specials. It’s not her. She’s late twentieth century born Arizona trash, not Tahani.

It is nice though, especially combined with such an awe-inspiring setting, complete with her own angelic companion offering his hand out to her. She can try this one thing for him, even if it means most likely making an ash of herself.

“Eleanor Shellstrop, birthday queen, may I have this dance?” Michael asks.

She flashes him a smile. After everything he’s done for her and more, how could she say no?

She takes his hand and lets him pull her in close, one hand moving to the small of her back. He moves slowly at first, for her, letting her get her feet in rhythm with his. She’d rather not have to stand on his shoes again like a little kid.

“Don’t look at your shoes, just look at me.” He tells her and she does.

It’s a much better view anyway.

Eleanor keeps her focus on the devotion shining from Michael’s eyes as he moves her around the endless space, stepping over different stars and distant galaxies. She sees all the countless little lights reflected in his glasses, along with her own eyes meeting his. Somehow, it’s easier for her body to move where he needs her to go so long as she keeps looking at him.

Maybe he’s hypnotising her? That would be rather forked up for an angel to do.

She shoves that thought out because she knows it would be easier for her to think that this was all something fake, something forced on her against the will, rather than accept the truth. The truth being that she’s falling for Michael harder than she’s ever fallen for any guy in her life and afterwards. She remembers developing feelings for Chidi, close and warm and trusting affection, but it all feels so distant now. Like a memory she can barely grasp, not when there’s something so close and constant in front of her, coiling its way around her heart. This isn’t a lie, it’s not a trick that any demon is playing on her to expand on her torture…it’s real. It’s here.

He’s here.

And she’s here with him, the two of them waltzing around space, their steps seeming to pass great distances as the stars swirl around them and all the many different, colorful planets pass over them. It makes her feel so tiny, a spec afloat in a boundless void of cosmic wonder, while at the same time she feels invincible, so long as Michael is with her. The galaxy is hers to explore and dance through as she wills. It’s the exact opposite of the tiny, cramped cell she had once been locked in, where the only visitor she had was pain.

Michael carefully spins her under his arm, the feathers fluttering on her sparkling dress as it twirls around her legs as she moves out and then back into his arms, her feet finding their pace in tune with his again. This is easier than she thought, so long as he’s not expecting a tango or anything too complex tonight. She likes the parts where she gets to lean close into him and his hand is holding her close by her hip, his other holding hers tight and secure.

“Do angels have a lot of dancing lessons then?” She asks, quietly.

He shakes his head; “This is my first time.”

Eleanor looks at him, incredulously. How is he so sure of himself? She has images of him practising dancing with an invisible partner, or possibly Janet, while listening to old timey records in his office.

She tightens her hand around his. She doesn’t want him to be dancing alone again.

As a meteorite passes overhead, they share a kiss, and Eleanor doesn’t even think of any passing debris hitting them. Nothing could touch her here, or back on solid ground, or anywhere in this place. Michael’s place, where he’s told her enough times that she belongs, where he’ll keep her safe.

He moves his lips to her ear and sings along with the music.

_“I may not always love you,  
But ‘long as there are stars above you,  
You’ll never need to doubt it,  
I’ll make you so sure about it.”_

She sighs, smiling, resting her head against his chest, feeling his fingers comb through her hair.

_“God only knows what I’d be without you…”_

Eleanor knows where she would be without Michael. And she never wants to lose him, not only because it would mean her return to damnation. But because, fork it, she simply never wants to lose him. There’s no other reason than that.

She feels the words on her lips as the dance comes to an end and she clings to him. Three words.

They balance on the tip of her tongue but she can’t quite bring herself to say them. Maybe it’s too soon. Maybe she’s swept away by the stars and getting to be the first Arizona astronaut. That’s enough to make any girl more than a little giddy. She does love Michael, she knows that. She could say the words and they would be truer than anything she knows, but is it true love? Is it real dive-right-in love that she’s never been brave enough to go for before?

And what if he doesn’t feel quite the same? What if he adores her, cares for her, because all of that is blindingly obvious, but angels might not be capable of the same love as humans? So much is still uncertain. She doesn’t want all these questions and anxieties on her birthday.

“Wow…” She says as they pull back, her head incredibly light, hands still holding onto Michael so she doesn’t collapse in the abyss; “That was…somethin’.”

“Something?”

“…Something awesome.” She concedes; “But I think we need to up the tempo a little for the next track, or else I’m gonna fall asleep on an asteroid.”

“Go for it. Your birthday. But…thank you, Eleanor, for that dance.” He says, reaching to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

She kisses his cheek; “Don’t worry, bud. Night is still young. We got plenty of dancing ahead until I wanna go back to Earth. Also…I might need you to fork my brains out on one of those comets at some point.”

Michael grins at her and kisses her again. It wouldn’t be a true Shellstrop experience if she didn’t lower the class a little bit. Hopefully, this time won’t end up with them getting banned from space.

*

Sometimes he wondered if keeping up this pretence was worth it. The humans must feel the same every now and then. Having to put up with going along with his teams torture attempts interrupting any effort to live a normal life, spending time together, enjoying the limitless benefits of the fake Good Place was becoming more of a headache than he had predicted. And Michael wasn’t even the one being tortured, not intentionally.

He was supposed to be the man in charge. This was supposed to be his little game, his stage play, to enjoy as he sat back and played the puppet master watching the show.

Except he no longer took pleasure in seeing Tahani be verbally bullied after putting so much effort into her parties and events. He no longer found it funny to see Jason squirm as he struggled to keep up the silent monk act when Gunner held a Madden tournament at the arcade. Okay, watching Chidi grow a second head that told him what to do had been a little funny, but not for long. And Eleanor…Fork, he knows that Eleanor is a trooper and taking all of this in her stride. But he’s not. He hates not being able to show her the affection he’d like to in public. He hates having to keep up this act of the evil mastermind delighting in their misery around his employees. He hates not being able to hold her in his arms every night.

And now, this weekend, they’d had to cancel their monthly getaway to the beach house, all because Vicky insisted on her idea of having a talent competition, complete with ideas on how to humiliate the four humans in turn. She’d seemed suspicious when he’d attempted to get her to postpone it after everyone seemed on board, so he hadn’t pressed too hard.

“Hi, Michael.” Janet appears in his office while he’s looking over the itinerary for what the weekend torture will entail before he shares it with Eleanor and her friends so they can prepare.

He turns to Janet with a nervous look.

“Hey…How did she take it? Did you tell her how sorry I am? Is she mad?”

“I explained everything to Eleanor and she said not to worry. In her words, it’s just one weekend and you can make it up to her next month.” Janet explains, sincerely, making Michael feel a little less shirty.

He takes a breath; “Yeah, I will. I’ll get a swimming pool full of shrimp…No, that’s stupid. I’ll think of something, anything-.”

“Michael.” Janet stops him, “You’re doing fine. And that’s not Eleanor talking, that’s my opinion.”

He nods, grateful, noting Janet slowly become more ‘human’ as the months pass. It does mean a lot to hear her say that, even when it often feels like he’s not doing enough to fulfil the promise he made. The promise to get better, to work on getting them all out of here, get Eleanor and the humans to the Good Place where they belong, points or no points.

“Thank you, Janet.” He says as a cue to dismiss her, if she wants to leave.

“I have one more thing,” She passes him a vinyl record; “Eleanor wanted me to give you this. She made it herself. I think she was planning on playing it when you got to the beach house but she wanted to cheer you up.”

Michael holds the record between his fingers, examining it, his interest peeked.

It does seem a rather odd present for Eleanor to get him. Cheer him up? Had she really been able to see through his mask when they passed each other in town and saw how depressed he was lately, being kept so busy that he wasn’t able to spend time with any of them? It warms what exists in place of a human heart that she gave as much thought as to make whatever this is for him.

He gets out the record player from one of his human collectable cabinets and carefully puts the black disk on, moving the needle onto it.

There’s no recorded message to start. She wouldn’t be that dumb.

In fact, he can easily lie for her that this is part of her talent show audition, until she’s forced to do whatever the other demons have planned to annoy her.

Her voice softly croons out a rendition of an old song, long before her time. He can imagine Chidi having suggested it, doubting it would be on her own radar. It sure is fitting though.

_“See the pyramids along the Nile  
Watch the sun rise on a tropic isle  
Just remember, darling, all the while  
You belong to me.”_

Michael goes to the window and looks up at the stars shining above his neighborhood. He has no doubt that Eleanor is watching the same sky, probably sat at her window. Part of him hopes not, as much as he warms at the idea of them having this moment together despite being apart. He hopes that she’s distracted, maybe having a late-night study session with Chidi, or the two of them watching a movie, or maybe she’s having an early night's rest. A peaceful, nightmare-free sleep. It’s enough that she made a song for him, he doesn’t need her staying up worrying over him.

That’s his job. For her. For all of them.

_“And I’ll be so alone without you,  
Maybe you’ll be lonesome too…”_

He snaps his fingers and a comet passes over the town, closer than one would be able to be seen on Earth. Chances are it isn’t the same one he made Eleanor scream his name on. But could be.

He always makes sure that the stars shine clear and bright over the town, now that he knows, more than ever, how much she loves them, how they’re a constant reminder that she’s free. Or at least, way more free than she ever was where that ash-hole kept her before, deep and dark beneath the ground. There’s never a cloud in the sky at night. There’s never a darkened moon.

Hopefully, she sees the comet and knows it’s his way of saying thank you.

Michael resists the urge to dance on his own, with an invisible partner in his arms, to the song. He has the real thing in his memories. He leans his head back against the side of the window frame, listening to the record pop and crackle ever so softly as Eleanor’s song begins to end, repeating what he already knows, what he tells himself, each and every day.

_“Just remember till we're home again,  
You belong to me.”_


	4. Paranoia/Confidence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael's little voice has a few things to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's nothing really 'new' in this chapter, it was more for me to play around with a different style and getting into Michael's voice. Warning for NSFW sex scene (consensual this time!)

You can’t do this.

You know that there’s protocol. There are rules to be adhered to. Shawn’s rules. You wanna get anywhere in this business then do as Val said. Keep your head down. Don’t rock the boat. You’re just a small squid in a great, big magma pool. The fact that you were able to convince them to let you take this insane gambit is an unholy miracle in itself!

Okay, so you had a couple of set-backs, but otherwise everything was going according to plan. Eleanor threw you for a loop but that was being fixed now. Fixed by another demon. A demon who is getting his filthy hands on your human, handling her, hurting her...Breaking her with the most boring and simple torture methods.

Sure, it wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. Eleanor deserved to be broken by your methods. Clever, psychological torture, a slow burn of a thousand years being trapped amidst her own anxieties and worst companions. You would get your chance. Let Trevor rough her up and then have her brought back, let her get her shirt back together, then you can show them all how much better your methods are.

That’s what you need to do, Mikey. Just sit back and wait.

No. Damn it, no, do not go charging in there! What the fork do you think you’re doing?! Shawn is going to be pissed! He said that he would call you when Eleanor was ‘ready’ to come back!

Is this because of what Chidi said? Are you gonna let that little nerd boss you around?

The more time you make him wait for her, the longer he suffers. It’s a freebie, dumbash!

Or is it because of what he made you listen to? Sure, those screams are annoying. Who knows why you can’t seem to get them to stop playing in your head every night? Maybe get an iPod, drown her out with some Axl Rose. Or Bon Jovi…? No, on second thought, not Bon Jovi. In any case, why does it bother you so much? You’ve been hearing humans screaming since your college days! What’s so special about Eleanor Forking Shellstop?

Is it because she made you that bracelet? Is that all it’s gonna take to soften you up? First human…no, first being in existence, to give you a present and suddenly they’re all you can think about?

Get it together, dingus! The only reason she gave you that tat, in fact the only reason she wanted to hang out with you at all, was to save her own icky pink skin! She wanted to distract you so you wouldn’t keep making her interrogate rocks for another hour and a half! It doesn’t matter if you had fun, it doesn’t matter how many times she made you laugh, it wasn’t real! And it wasn’t what you’re supposed to be doing!

You’re a demon. You don’t get to ‘hang out’. You don’t get to have friends.

You have your job and you have your humans, to torment and nothing more. Stop wasting your time wandering what it would be like to be one of them. What it would be like to sleep in a bed, to eat with a group of friends, to go see a movie, to ride a bike on a street.

You have your collection of trinkets and nick-nacks. Aren’t they enough? Can’t you be sated just to look at them, sealed away behind glass, never touching, never really knowing…?

That’s your weakness. Trying to deny what you are.

Eleanor saw that, she saw how fascinated you were with humans, the passion in your eyes when you talked about what inspired you to choose frozen yoghurt. She saw that and she used it against you. She gave you a taste of what it was like to be human, to just be some guy spending the day with his fellow human ‘friend’, and she very nearly had you. But you knew better.

In fact, it was that word ‘friend’ which snapped you out of it. Foolish mortal. Sneaky Shellstrop.

…Your Shellstrop…

Fork, just block it out. Don’t think about the screams. The wordless shrieks devoid of her feisty, dirty cursing she loved so much, that could only mean Trevor took away her ability to say them. Oh…It’s not right. It’s not fair, not even on her. The humans should at least have some chance of struggling against their torment, an opportunity to think they can be one step ahead, like a fox managing to disguise its tracks. It made the sport fun and not just…savage and pointless. That’s the whole reason you’re doing this after all. Trying to make it ‘fun’ again.

For you and your guys, for every demon in the Bad Place, not the humans. Who cares about those dummies? You don’t.

You don’t care about her. You don’t care how much she suffers. Only whose hand she is suffering by.

That’s why you’re on this train and why you refuse to turn back, no matter how much I try to get through to you. You only want what is yours and refuse to wait any longer.

This was partly supposed to be the original plan anyway, right? Trevor begins to take Eleanor to the Bad Place and then you swoop in at the last minute, riding in on a white horse except not because it wouldn’t fit inside the train. This is more or less the same, only with a couple of extra, teeth-pulling steps along the ride. It will mean more this way, if you come for her, if it seems as though you shattered the gates of Hell itself to get to her, like Eurydice on steroids.

Everyone thinks that you’re a joke. Everyone is doubting that your experiment will work except for the hundred or so in your team who were somewhat eager to try something new and fun. You need to prove the nay-sayers wrong and also repay the trust by those few who were on board. You need to prove to Shawn that this trouble was all worth it.

Ignore their looks as you march towards the cells where you know she’s being kept. Walk like a man on a mission, long strides, stern gaze fixed forward.

Time is of the essence. Hurry the fork up. The more time she spends with him, the less of her there will be when you find her. You know what Trevor is like. There’s almost none darker and more sadistic as him among all the demons here. Why the fork did you have to call him?! Was it worth it, just to scare the shirt outta Eleanor? She’ll sure know what to be afraid of now! It might be all that remains in her battered skull…

Your jaw clenches. You’re imagining the worst that he’s done to her.

What if she’s inside out? What if she’s scattered around in tiny pieces? Shake it off. It doesn’t matter. A simple flick of magic and she’ll be good as new. None of this will matter except what she needs to remember, in order to stay in your fake Good Place, to keep her on her rebuilt toes.

Trevor is leaning against the wall of the corridor, reading one of those (not so) real-life story magazines.

_My Mother Had Sex With My Boyfriend And Then Ate His Face_

He looks up at you as you come around; “Hey, Mikey boy! Been a few Bearimys, huh? I mean for me, anyway, probably only a couple weeks up on your end, huh?”

The other demon gives fist bumps your shoulder. You look at your sleeve, as if he just spat on it.

How dare he act so forking casual?

“I’m here to collect Eleanor.” You tell him, straight down to business; “Where is she?”

He quirks an eyebrow at you. He can hear the tension in your voice.

“Eleanor…Eleanor…” He ponders aloud, rolling up his trashy magazine; “Sorry, I have quite a few Eleanors on my list, I’m trying to pin-point yours! The tall ginger? Or the brunette with the mole?”

Okay, your urge to pin him against the wall and twist the most ‘delicate’ parts of his human suit until he gives you the information you want is understandable. Bastard.

Step closer; “Eleanor Shellstrop. My Eleanor – Where is she, Trevor?”

“I’m just messin’, bro, I got her kept all snug on C Block.” He points down towards the end, where a broken red light-bulb flickers, annoyingly; “Only I’m pretty sure I was supposed to wait for Shawn to tell me when to ship her back to you, not just hand her over?”

“Change of plans. I’ll be taking her now. Show me to her.” You can be rather forceful when you want.

Trevor doesn’t put up that much of a fight. What is one less toture victim for him out of the hundreds he has in his circuit? He turns with a whistle and points for you to follow.

You can hear the screams and pitiful whimpers from humans in the cells you pass, making your way towards the only one you’re here for. Amazing how you can forget about those noises almost instantly and yet Eleanor’s has rung constant in your mind for over a week. Those humans don’t belong to you, they’re not your concern. She is.

“We’re gonna need to start putting on a show as we get closer, make it seem like I had to argue with the Good Place council or whoever to get her free.” You explain to him, lazily.

“Gotcha. Anything for a good RP.” Trevor starts to clear his throat, preparing to act. If nothing else, at least he’s less pretentious than Vicky; “Oh by the way, seeing as I had no heads up you’d be coming, I didn’t have time to clean her up and get her all pretty for you. So, any complaints you plan on making about Product Condition, you can send them all to Bad Janet and m’sure she’ll have fun shitting them back out down the crapper.”

You were prepared for this. You knew she weren’t gonna be smelling of roses, not since Chidi forced you to listen to that recording. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about what it felt like…for her.

Just keep up with Trevor, say your lines, pretend to have fought for her.

You just have to pretend that you wanted her back because she’s your friend, or whatever shit you can think of. You just have to pretend to be her hero. Get her out, get her home, and then you can get back to being what you’re supposed to be. Her worst nightmare disguised as her guardian angel.

You can do this.

*

You can’t do this.

What were you thinking?! Agreeing to take care of a human?! No, not agreeing – _offering!_

This isn’t what demons are meant to do. Your whole purpose is to make humans suffer! It’s to make them miserable, to cause them pain, so as to restore the balance of the Universe. Eleanor is Bad. She’s a terrible, selfish, nasty little creature who is supposed to be being punished for all the hurt and anguish she so freely dealt out in her lifetime. She’s not supposed to know comfort or warmth or safety or any of that garbage.

So why are you so intent on making her feel those things? Why do you keep telling her that it’s safe here? Why do you keep checking on her, fussing over her, making sure she’s not too cold or overly heated? Why continue to hover close to her when you know that nothing can hurt her here unless you will it to? Why does it bother you when you cook something for her and she doesn’t like it, or worse is disgusted by it?

Ungrateful little wretch should be glad that all her food doesn’t turn to dung beetles. You should do that one time, just to remind her of the worst of what she could have, then wave it off as a glitch of some sorts. It’s all her fault, after all. She’s the mistake. The wrench among the cogs. Make her remember that. Remind her that she’s not supposed to be here…

You keep grappling against these thoughts as you massage the shampoo into her hair. She sits still and silent, as she does every night, her index finger gliding across the water in front of her, making random shapes. She looks as though she doesn’t even care what she’s drawing, perhaps just likes the feel of it, her other arm hugging her knees against her chest.

She’s been so quiet today but hasn’t slept. Just sitting. Staring. Boring little mute.

All attempts at conversation brought no reaction. Maybe Trevor removed her eardrums? No, she wouldn’t have jumped out of her skin when you shut that cupboard a bit too loud earlier. She can hear just fine, she’s just not…here. You should snap her back to your reality. If she’s still mentally with Trevor then it’s like you never even saved her in the first place.

Returned her. Not rescued. Don’t start believing in the lie, Mike.

“Eyes closed.” You tell her and she obeys. Always obeys. Trevor trained her well.

It’s just a shame that amiable and docile is the exact opposite of how you like your Eleanor Shellstrops to be.

Pour the water over her head as she closes her eyes, rinsing out the shampoo and letting it drip through her hair, smoothing it out with your fingers. She’ll be smelling of strawberries and kiwi for the rest of the night, especially after you’re done with the conditioner. The cream you washed her skin with also smells of fruit. You could turn her into a watermelon. At least pour cold water over her next time to make her jump a little.

Do something, damn it. Be creative, be inventive, isn’t that your whole deal?

She shudders as you finish rinsing out the shampoo and begin smoothing the conditioner through the ends of her blond locks. Fork, test the water, it might be starting to cool. She has been soaking for a while. Snap your fingers. Let the water heat up, just a little bit, barely noticeable. Keep her comfortable.

Ugh, comfort in the Bad Place?! No, damn it!

You pick up the jug and fill it with warm water again, one hand still on her hair.

Why not try pushing her head down? Not for too long, obviously, just enough to assert some control. Remind her that you hold her fate in your hands. This isn’t a vacation. It’s a respite, at the least, before she’s due to return to ‘your’ Bad Place, not Trevor’s. Not that she’s to know that. Never go too far that she would work that out or think that this was anything less than paradise. But just…give her a touch of fear. Make her dizzy, make her gasp, make her forking grateful for the free air you let her breathe…

She turns her head to the side, confused as to why you’re taking so long. Her shoulders are tense. That’s enough fear. You don’t need to add it to it right now.

“Nearly done. Eyes closed again.” You whisper, rinsing out the sweet-smelling cream in her hair.

You put down the jug and reach for the towel. Eleanor glances, meekly, up at you, eye level never exceeding your collarbone. She’s starting to tremble again.

Look at her, sitting without a stitch on. She can cover her breasts with her elbows, but she has no idea how exposed she is in your eyes. She’s an open wound, a raw nerve. You can see the bruises, swollen and purple, where that forker broke her ribs. You can see his fingerprints on her hips, her throat, everywhere. No amount of soap is going to wash those off anytime soon. The signs of damage are on her soul, not her body.

Quickly, get her out. Get her wrapped up in warm, soft layers.

You reach down, towel in both hands, and tug her slim, naked form out of the tub. Sitting on the floor, you swaddle the towel around her shivering frame, rubbing and drying her down. She curls against your chest as you wrap her up, folding the feathery fabric around her limbs, making sure nothing is revealed below her shoulders. One of her hands sneaks its way out, clutching onto your shirt.

Well. You wanted to play the role of her hero. She seems to have bought into it.

Fork.

You kiss the top of her head. Only because it tastes of strawberries. If it happens to calm her down as well then that’s merely a bonus. You don’t get her dressed or dry her hair straight away. For some reason you choose to sit for a stupidly long amount of time, holding her on your lap, sat beside the bathtub. Your folded knees go numb beneath her minimal weight. She hasn’t napped all day and she’s quickly starting to fall asleep on you. This is really the worst thing you could be doing, idiot.

Something has been wrong. She is wrong, full stop, no question of that. But today has been…off. As if the long-held silence was merely the calm before the storm. Be thankful she wasn’t screaming. Be thankful she didn’t throw any fits or try to scratch through the walls. Somehow this feels more frightening.

You feel her start to shake again. There’s a wetness against your shirt that isn’t caused by her damp skin.

“Shh, please don’t cry. Please don’t.” Your hand is on her head. You’re so tired.

What are you pleading with her for? Do you even hear yourself?! Begging a human?!

The crying hurts your ears, sure. It’s nearly as bad as the screaming. The sight of her tears makes you wince, only because you’re trying so hard – too hard – to make her feel better and every sign of sadness or fear makes you think you’re failing her. It makes you worry that this is all for nothing and you will never get your human back as she was. That sucks. Fine. That should be giving you more reason to despise her.

To want to…

Eleanor snuffles, taking in a breath, fingers curling against your shirt. She takes another deep breath and…is she actually trying not to cry? Because you asked? Holy shirt, is she actually doing those breathing techniques to calm herself down for once?

You frown and rub her back in circles, helping her along.

“That’s it. You’re okay, Eleanor, I’ve got you. I’m not going anywhere.” You tell her and she takes another sniff.

That’s it. She was always a pro at stopping herself from crying before. A trick her mother taught her well. No crying was allowed in the Shellstrop household, despite there being plenty of reasons to bawl her eyes out. She knew how to keep it in. She had to learn. She had no choice.

Oh, crab.

“On second thought…Cry as much as you want.” You tell her because you’re too darn soft. Too weak.

She raises her chin a little. Is that the first time she’s ever been told that?

Funny enough, as soon as you tell her she’s free to cry, she loses the need to. Her aura settles by itself. She rubs at her eyes. Time for bed.

You lift her up and carry her over to the bed, placing her down. When you remove the towel, her pyjamas have already appeared by magic, as well as a sneaky finger snap, on her body. She seems to barely notice, blinking down at herself, eyes growing heavier by the second. She’s usually not this drowsy until you brush her hair. Put the towel over her head and move it down, the same trick, instantly drying it. You smile as you gently touch the soft, blond locks grazing her shoulders. All done.

Pulling back the duvet, you coax her to lay down and you tuck her in. She should be asleep before her head hits the pillow but the stubborn little thing keeps her eyes open. You kneel beside her bed and take her hand. She squeezes at it, fingers interlocking with your own. Her aura, so grey and muted since you brought her here, is starting to tremble…white?

Will you dare believe that’s a sign that you’re getting somewhere?

Stroke her forehead, that usually sends her off. There you go, her eyes start to flutter, pupils still gazing onto you. She’s holding on to your hand for her dear afterlife. She needs you…

When has anyone ever needed you before? When has anyone ever wanted…?

Give her a smile and kiss her forehead again, taking one more sneaky taste of strawberry.

“Eyes closed, sleepy head.” You call her because it’s all she forking does. In fact, by the time you’ve pulled away, her eyelids have firmly shut, mouth partly open. Sound asleep. At last.

You can’t leave yet. She still won’t let go. Crafty minx.

Better get comfy, Michael, you’ll be here a while. You can watch Season Two of Scream Queens tomorrow night. Sit and inhale that fruity aroma, watch the slow glow and fade of her aura with each tiny breath, squeeze her hand whenever she starts to whimper from her ravaged dreams so she knows you haven’t abandoned her. Look at her. She’s all yours.

You’re getting there with her. Slowly. But it’s happening. You can’t risk torturing her, letting her fall back. You can’t give her anything less than Heavenly care until she’s back to normal. You can play the hero. You’re halfway there.

You can do this.

*

You can’t do this.

You keep messing it up! What is this now, your fifth attempt? Play the video again, see what it is that you’re missing. What is it that this Canadian loser is doing that you’re not, aside from having a questionable haircut? Does that somehow effect how cocktails are mixed?

The last one tasted a little too sharp. Might be too much salt on the rim of the glass.

It could be that you’re just not a tequila guy, it’s never gonna taste right for you. But it needs to taste right for her.

She’s been making so much progress, she deserves a treat, it’s only fair.

Besides, how could you convince her this was Heaven without her favorite drink? Sure, you could ask Janet to summon one for her and it would be guaranteed to be perfect. But it lacks the personal touch. It’s also something to help you pass the time instead of, oh y’know, doing actual work there, Mikey boy.

You try to reconcile it in your head. As a demon, your job is to treat humans how they deserve to be treated, to restore the cosmic balance. When a human is Bad, they deserve to be punished. But when a human is Good? And, oh, Eleanor has been doing so good, she’s come such a long way in these past few weeks alone. There are no angels here to reward her for that so you’ll have to do, won’t you! It’s no longer just spoiling her, giving her Opposite Tortures as you call them just for the sake of it.

But you know your boss wouldn’t agree, which is why you’re still copying paragraphs from Stephen King novellas and sending them Shawn’s way, faking all the details as your own ideas. The points system has nothing in its rulebook about how overcoming a traumatic experience is positive or negative. Well, fork that. The only point system that matters here is your own and you can see, plain as day, how much effort it’s taken Eleanor to come as far as she has.

She’s almost mastered walking. Her speech is stilted but getting better. She hasn’t tried to ‘present’ herself as available, sexually, to you in weeks, Trevor’s cruel programming undone. That’s gotta be worth a decent fifty points for each one.

Or at least worth a tasty margarita.

When she comes back inside after a few hours of sunbathing, having taken another quantum leap with finally asking something from Janet, there’s something radiant about her, as if she brought the sun inside with her on a balloon string. She puts that shirt on, your shirt! Or what was your shirt! Do you plan on asking for it back any time soon? Why bother, it’s all Eleanor-fied now. And you have a million choices of shirts to wear.

What is that sensation, that tingle rushing vertically through your body, when you see her in your clothes? Or when you see her walk, as tall as she can with her stunted confidence, in her bikini across the sand?

You want to kiss her. That’s nothing earth-shattering. You’ve kissed her on the forehead. She’s kissed you on the cheek. The multiverse didn’t collapse in on itself. You didn’t feel the need to throw up.

You want…something else. Something you shouldn’t.

It’s all her fault. You can pinpoint the moment in time when you knew. That day you were playing with the water guns, a simple exercise meant to help get her running again, which just so happened to be incredibly fun as well. She might have won that round, partly through cheating with her little paperclip trick, the conniving she-devil. That had been enough to get your juices flowing, just not in those ways. Not until you saw her standing on those steps. Standing above you. In your shirt.

There she was. Not a victim. Not a weak, dependent animal for you protect.

Eleanor Shellstrop. Brave and beautiful. In that second, you knew it. You knew she had you.

Just put those thoughts out of your mind, Michael. You’re her carer. She’s your charge. It would be completely messed up if you were to try anything when she’s still so vulnerable, when she’s still so dependent, perhaps not physically but emotionally. She doesn’t need you to bathe her or feed her anymore. But she needs you to be there. She still looks to you to hold her hand when she’s not feeling so brave. She clings to you at night when she sleeps to shelter from the nightmares.

No. Forget all that. You’re not a carer. You’re a demon. And she’s a human.

Let’s not add bestiality on both of your parts for how sick that is. You’re not supposed to be looking after her. You’re her torturer. And this isn’t some twisted, cheap Stockholm Syndrome romance flick on Netflix where the captor manages to win the girl’s heart. If anything, it’s more like Lima Syndrome. You want her…She doesn’t want you. Not like that.

A demon and a human together? You’d be retired on the spot…if it was proven to be consensual.

How forked up was that? The only type of intimacy permitted cross-species for demons was the kind that Trevor indulged in? Damn it, the thought of being like him…of hurting Eleanor just to get his rocks off…

Shut those feelings out. Shut her out if need be, if you’re so terrified that something within you might be damaged, if you might accidentally give into what they installed in your Harassment training. It’s not worth the risk, Michael. Not just because of the experiment. Not just because it would give the game away to Eleanor of where she is. What you are.

Don’t do it…Because it’s wrong.

You tell yourself that and the nightmares still come. Not for her, not while you’re there to protect her. They come for you. You, who isn’t supposed to know how to sleep, now you know why.

You dream of searching for her, screaming her name in the dark, hearing nothing but her tortured cries and a train pulling away from the tracks. You dream of Trevor arriving at the door and instead of slamming it shut, you hand her over to him, in exchange for a senior management pin. You dream of having her at your mercy, blood and tears staining her face, forcing her to please you as she pleased him. No sleep is worth those dreams, not even with Eleanor in your arms.

Just stay away. Keep your distance. Let her find her own feet, let her be free.

Then you hear her cry out at the night while you’re on the sofa, trying but failing to get into this Ozark show. Your knee judders and your fingers twitch. There’s nothing worse in this existence than the sound of her in pain. You want to rush in, you want to wrap her in your arms, let her know that she’s safe, that she can trust you to keep it that way.

Only you can’t trust yourself.

It takes her being plastered, nearly drowning in a bottle of neat tequila, until the truth becomes clear. You forking dubash. Of course you wouldn’t hurt her! You physically couldn’t. Not after all this time. This would be your perfect moment. She’s never been more vulnerable, more desperate, practically back to her old self. No longer your patient. Just a human girl trying to kiss you, ready to let you have her, claim her skin in all the less-violent ways you’ve imagined lately.

But you don’t. You say no. What do you expect, a medal for being a decent forking being? Don’t be a Ross.

Keeping her at arm’s length only made things worse. It made her feel lonelier, it took away the only source of comfort and company she has. You might be a monster. But you’re no animal. You can control yourself. Just being close to her, having her in your arms, seeing her smile at you, being her friend…That’s more than enough. It’s all that makes sense among the madness. It’s euphoria.

You let her sober up a bit by feeding her the lasagne that was supposed to be heated up hours ago. Now try making that margarita again. A little less orange this time. More fresh lime.

You watch Eleanor take a sip, the two of you sat cross-legged in the sand, beneath the moonlight.

She gives a satisfied hum and wipes her lips, looking at you with those eyes. You worry that she’ll try to kiss you again, but all she does is shuffle herself into your lap and move your arms around her. She giggles, more than a little tipsy, but a lot less misery fuelled, as she leans back against you.

“’Better stay with me tonight, angel buddy. Who knows what crazy shirt I’ll get up to if left alone.” She pokes your nose and grins, bumping her chin against your collar.

You’ll stay. She can hardly put herself to bed in this state. And you might as well sleep next to her in case the nightmares decide to come back while her addled brain is susceptible for an attack.

Nothing bad will happen. It’s up to you to make sure of that. You won’t hurt her, you tell yourself, smoothing your thumb over her cheek as you hold her close. You’re not him. You can keep it in your pants, keep everything between the two of you chaste and innocent. You don’t have to be what they told you.

You can do this.

*

You can’t do this.

Fork.

This is wrong.

You’ve been telling yourself for weeks, months, that this was a line you would not cross! After everything that she’s been through, everything that you’re keeping from her, this is the worst idea you could ever put into action, Mikey. And don’t try to blame her! Just because she initiated that first kiss. Just because she made as many moves as you, promised to guide you through it, kept asking for more. That’s no excuse. It takes two to tango, buddy.

You’re the great, immortal being here. The superior entity. You may as well be getting it on with a cockroach…No, that analogy doesn’t work anymore. Not with her. Not Eleanor.

The hips that are held in your fingers belong to no cockroach. They’re not revolting. They’re incredible. Your grip tightens as they rock on top of you, taking in the not-so-dangling part of your human suit that you once mistook for a limb.

She clenches around you and, wow, this is unbelievable. The pleasure rumbles through you like nothing in all of your worthless aeons of existence and surely this is just another dream.

You move your hand to her back, clutching her close in case she vanishes, grinding your hips up into her, as far as you can, as much as she is comfortable. You can’t tell by her cries whether or not she’s enjoying it. She will tell you, explicitly, if she wants you to back off. Until then you just go by the reddening sparkle of her aura, by the shuddering of her thighs and her arms as you try to hit the right spots. This should be easier than the last time…the first time. You’re on a sofa for starters instead of the floor of your office, at least comfort is on your side.

Amazing how a ‘pure’ plan of merely watching a movie together on the couch still managed to turn into this. It must have been a crabby movie as you can’t even remember the name of it. You can’t think of much else except the gorgeous human woman currently riding your deck.

Open your eyes. Look at her.

Blond, untidy locks fall over her shoulders, eyelids heavy with want instead of exhaustion. This is not the same girl you had to bath and tuck into bed all those months ago. This is not a helpless creature having faith that you won’t abuse her fragile trust. This isn’t Trevor’s broken toy.

Look at her. This is Eleanor. Your Eleanor. The one who melted you, a centuries old demon, with a cheeky smile and a sneaky trip to the arcade.

The thought pumps you with adrenaline as you move in to kiss her, thrusting into her more, making her cry out against your lips, her fingers on your arm.

“Oh….Oh, damn, Michael…!” She breathes, beads of sweat glistening down her neck.

Damn, indeed. You’ve damned the both of you. It’s a good thing that you’re already where the damned call home.

Your mouth finds her shoulder, teeth sinking in a little as you go deeper. And she cries out. She screams.

It’s okay. It’s a good scream. It means you did good.

So why the fork are you all twisted up again? You move your head back, gritting your teeth. You’re no where near finished yet. You’re afraid to keep going.

Her hand finds your cheek and you open your eyes again.

“Something wrong, babe?” She frowns with concern, her breath still heavy. She has more energy in her. You two can keep this up all night if you want. It’s not as if you’re on a tight schedule.

You shake your head. Nothing is wrong with this. Not right now. A million-year-old law about human-demon relationships might be violated in more ways than one. But you’re way past caring about that now. That line is so far behind you that it may as well be a dot on the horizon.

“M’just…worried…My bosses wouldn’t be too happy about this…” You admit as much as you can and it’s not enough.

You could tell her truth. You have to. You owe her that much.

Just…some other time. Not when your deck is deep inside of her, still waiting for its release.

“They’re not peeping in are they? Bunch of angelic pervs?” She smiles, a finger stroking down your jawline.

You shake your head, returning the grin. Not as far as you know. Surely if Shawn had installed a secret camera here then you would be scooped out and burning on a million suns by now. Or maybe the whole thing is being broadcast throughout the Bad Place, a porno version of the Truman Show. They better be getting some decent ratings if that’s the case.

Her hands move through your hair and you find yourself lost in her aqua eyes.

“They don’t have to know a thing. All that matter is right now. Me and you…a girl and her sexy immortal.” She whispers, her breath against your lips.

Fork it. She’s right.

You grab her, giving into every desire, every thrill pulsating through you. You flip her onto her back and you hold her wrists above her head. There’s a glimmer of fear in her eyes, just a flash, until she recognises the assurance, the safety, in your gaze. She feels that your hands, that have carried her out of hellfire, are not cable-ties slicing into her tender flesh. She gives you an open mouthed smile, her chest rising, tongue running along the edge of her teeth.

Sweet Lucifer, you can’t hold back anymore. Your mouth is on hers, tongues entwining, as you begin to move in her again. She doesn’t taste like strawberries anymore. She tastes of salt from the sea air and cheese from the pizza earlier. She is one hell of a snack.

You raise her thigh up to get a better angle as you move deeper and she tilts her head back. There are fireworks exploding around her right now. If only she could appreciate the show.

The hand you use to grip her wrists tightens as you come closer and closer.

Fix your eyes on hers. It’s time to remind her, in case there’s any confusion.

“You’re mine, sweet girl.” You whisper, “I chose you. I got you. No one’s taking you from me again. You belong to me, Eleanor.”

And, miraculously, she doesn’t fold. She doesn’t become a tiny submissive.

Instead, she smirks, and that’s why you fell for her.

“Right back at ya, angel.” She winds you up, hits those buttons, and you put your hand to her neck while she owns you with a mere look.

Holy shirt.

You finish the both of you off with three vigorous bucks inside of her, never once losing eye contact until she breaks it, her pupils rolling back as her body vibrates with pleasure beneath you. You groan and squeeze at her wrists again, your own all too human senses going into overload, the closest you will ever come to meeting the Big Boss above all Bosses, until it all starts to slowly wane away and you both fall gently back to solid ground.

Well. So much for not making this situation anymore forked up. In for a dime, in for a dollar.

You hold her half-naked form beneath the blanket a few moments later, the both of you making a bad show of pretending to watch the rest of this Mr & Mrs Smith flick.

“I’m glad we can no longer claim last night was a fluke.” She tells you.

Did she think that’s what you were planning? Shirt. It would have been so easy. Too late now.

You run your fingers through her hair; “You may have replaced paperclips as my favorite human obsession. I don’t think I’m ready to give you up so soon.”

“I don’t plan on going anywhere, bud.” She snuggles in close; “Are you still worried about us…being together? What it’ll mean for problems in the workplace?”

“Hmm. But we don’t need to worry about that. I’ll figure something out.”

What? What the fork do you have planned that could possibly make this work?

You can’t just dangle her along and then let her go as soon as you get back. Just because you’ve learned how to use a deck doesn’t mean you have to become one! You should not be going into this, you should not have let her kissed you and kissed her back, unless you were certain that you would not have to break her heart…

Maybe you don’t. Maybe you can find a way. Somehow. Try. Do it, Michael. For her.

Fork, how did it come to this? How did Eleanor Shellstrop become the centre of your universe?

If you’re serious about this, then you have to stick to it. It’s not about just caring for her, being her friend, making her happy with little magic tricks and home-made margaritas. This is a commitment. This is a…relationship. The first, true one you’ve ever had. Don’t fork it up!

“You wanna know something I’ve been curious to try but never had the chance?” She asks you, that look in her eyes. You know what she’s after.

Seriously? It’s not even been ten minutes!

“It’s a weird sex thing, isn’t it.” You guess.

“More like a weird sand thing…that happens to involve sex, shoot me.” She holds her hands up and is soon slipping out from under the blanket. She tugs on your hand to follow her out onto the beach.

What else can you do except follow? You’re nothing but a dog on a leash, Mikey.

She, a human, is your master now. Obey her whim and just enjoy the ride until the carnival closes and the power goes out. Deal with the repercussions some other time. Just be what she needs you to be and keep on worshipping her, relishing the pleasure she grants you back. Strange. When she brings you to your knees, somehow you feel stronger than you ever did alone.

You can do this.

*

You can’t do this.

Get the humans into the real Good Place without them having lived a Good life on Earth first? It’s never been done before. You might not have promised to know how, but it was foolish to tell them you could even attempt to find a way. You’re just setting them up for disappointment! If you wanted to keep torture them, fine, go for it, but that’s not what you intended! It’s not what you promised!

They have faith in you now. They’re looking to you as their savior.

It was only supposed to be a mask. It was only supposed to be a role you played to get Eleanor to look to you for succour, to want to do anything to win your favour. You royally messed that up. You liked it way too much. You melted at the look of adoration that being a knight in armor got you far more than you were ever able to get off of the fear when you tortured them.

Now you’ve dug yourself into a deeper hole when they’re expecting you to be breaking through the sky-light into Real Heaven. You’re not an angel, dude. You can’t fly them up above when you have no wings. Only flaming tentacles and you’re lucky they didn’t scare them off for good.

It’s all gonna go wrong once Shawn finds out. Which he will. You can’t keep this up forever.

The humans will be tortured and you will wish that Eleanor had left you to be retired in that ocean, once you were done hurling Trevor’s essence into the vast expanse of space. Why did you let her save you?

Just for a chance, a fleeting hope, of redemption?

Is it worth it?

You have tea with Tahani, you listen to her opinions on certain architectural designs and the gatherings she’s attended before, and at first it’s irritating as ever, until you start to really listen. Until you realise how clever she is, how much attention she pays to the little details, so much like yourself. And you fight the urge to tear her down with your words as you used to. As you once had done to her. You tell her she’s a wonderful person and this time there is no catch. This is worth it.

You do magic tricks for Jason. Often times real magic, giving him that weird fluffy dragon from that not so Never-Ending movie he likes. He’s just as amused by clever, human magic, clapping like a seal when you pull a rabbit out of a hat or reveal the card he chose from behind his ear. You even let him have a go with his own magic wand and it almost rips a hole in the fabric of time and space. Janet fixes it up and you see them kiss, watching how it makes Jason glow as much as any magic you can perform. This is worth it.

You put up with Chidi’s pointless ethics classes. You read the material you’re already familiar with. You criticise all the boring, stuffy philosophers that he idolises. You low-key torture him with real life simulations until he bans you from class until a metaphorical ear-twist from Eleanor is enough to send you back to apologise, invisible tail between your legs. Once you’re big enough to reveal your true feelings, your insecurities, he’s more than willing to help you. And after a private one-on-one session, Les Misérables seems to take on a whole different context. Chidi gives you an A plus and looks so proud of you. This is worth it.

And Eleanor.

She sees what you are. Who you are. You’re no longer her harp-plucking saint. But you’re still a hero in her eyes. You hurt her, you almost broke her all over again, and in turn she gutted you like a fish. Tit for tat.

Yet she still wants you. She forgave you…or at least, she’s trying to. She still waits for you, joins you at your private getaway, as when you’re free.

Is it forked up that you’re more attracted to her since she stuck that knife in you? You’re a demon, after all, shirt like that can be forgiven. You wouldn’t be asking for it again anytime soon. The image held in your mind’s eye is enough to get your juices fizzing again when you want.

You walk with her along the beach, her hand held safe in yours, the breeze causing her short dress to flutter against her thighs.

When she smiles at you, as much as love in her eyes as there was when you were an angel to her, you’re reminded of that incentive. What is at stake if you fail to find a way to save them. Save her. You tug on her hand and pull her close for a kiss. Her lips taste like strawberries again. Great, now you have a craving.

You’re taking far too much on your plate here. You’re rocking the boat again and you don’t have nearly enough life-jackets for two, let alone six!

Not that you’ll listen to me. If you had you wouldn’t be in this mess. _We_ wouldn’t.

So, keep on keeping on. Just remember what is at stake. Everything.

You can’t do this.

You can’t do this.

Look at her. 

Oh. Look at her, Michael.

I was wrong.

You can.


	5. Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eleanor has a special gift for Michael

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, a Christmas special chapter. In July. Just in case 2020 gets somehow worse, we might as well skip ahead!

She can hear the seagulls calling to each other. They’re not real seagulls, she knows. They’ve been constructed along with every bug and forest critter as much as all the rocks and trees and water. All designed by her personal silver haired savior. What happens to real seagulls, she wonders briefly? Michael said there was a Dog Heaven, is there one for each type of animal? Surely all seagulls go to the Bad Place, seaside rats that they are.

That could be a fitting description for herself, she soon realizes.

She doesn’t have to worry about these seagulls stealing her French fries or crapping on her while she’s sunbathing. They’re just there for the ambience, along with the sound of the gentle, rolling waves and the wind through the coconut trees. If only there she could hear a man trying to sell pirated dvds and stolen watches, she could almost tell herself she was somewhere along Santa Monica.

Some music would be a good, a little bit of Rhianna, maybe. She’s still getting used to asking Janet for whatever she wants, whenever she wants. Both her and Michael constantly assure her that it’s okay. That’s what Janet is there for, to make sure Eleanor wants for nothing.

It’s just…taking some time for the idea to truly settle that she’s not breaking some unwritten cosmic rule that will cause the Good Place to cave in on itself.

She knows it won’t. Ever since she arrived back, there have been no sink holes, no attacks of giant ladybugs or flying shrimp. No plants bursting into flame. Everything has been just as it is right now. Calm, serene, perfect. Just as you would expect Heaven to be. Had it been like this for her from her second day then she might have believed that would be no danger to her, an imposter, just going along pretending to be what they wanted, so long as she got to stay forever without the risk of being caught. Maybe her being in the wrong place wasn’t the cause of the glitches. Maybe it was just her lying about it.

So long as the resident Architect knew, so long as he wanted her to stay, the bugs could be fixed. Problem resolved. Eleanor Shellstrop can stay in the Good Place, despite the fact she’s not meant to be here.

Just don’t worry about it, she repeats his mantra through her head. Relax. Enjoy. You’re safe now.

Her jaw pops and cracks a little as she lets out a yawn, stretching her arms behind her head as she lays back on the towel. Her book is open on her chest, her right boob in place of a bookmark. Try as she might, she only manages to get a few pages through Scanlon each day before she feels her brain being called to snooze-land. It’s not her fault she was sleep deprived for who knows how long. Her body hungers for it now almost as much as warm food and clean water.

Something nudges at her elbow before her mind begins to drift off. Probably a hermit crab or something easy to ignore. So, she does.

Then she feels something tickle her nose and she feels the urge to sneeze. She wrinkles it, moving her hand to rub at her face.

Sand? What?

Oh, for fork’s sake. Eleanor opens her eyes to see Michael standing over her, sprinkling little teaspoons of sand over her.

“Dude! Not cool!” She spits some of the grains out of her mouth.

“I was curious to see how long until you woke up, if I was gonna end up burying you.” He smirks.

Eleanor glares at him; “Wasn’t ‘sleep!”

“You could’ve fooled me.” He says, big all-knowing know-it-all, “What happened to our movie night we had planned? You were gonna help me make the popcorn, remember?”

Is it that late already? The days are always so long here. An eternal summer. It doesn’t start to get dark until after nine and the dawn usually breaks through her bedroom window at around four, not that she ever rises with the sun unless her brain has already shocked her awake with some awful night terror.

“Soon.” She tells him, having finally got somewhat comfy on her towel. She holds up five fingers; “Pretty please?”

She’ll ask for five and then manage to wriggle her way into another half hour before going inside. Eleanor knows he will forgive her.

Michael makes a show of looking annoyed.

“Fine. But I’ll be taking this,” He reaches down and snatches his folded-up shirt that she had been using as a pillow; “Ha!”

Eleanor tuts, narrowing her eyes; “So cruel!”

Whatever, she can still manage to get a few last-minute rays. She’ll smoosh the sand into a mound behind her so she doesn’t get a sore neck. Nice try, Michael, but she’s not moving until she’s ready.

“Maybe I’ll start without you and hog all the popcorn to myself.” He threatens as he starts to walk away.

“’Could just ask Janet for more.” She counters, sliding onto her side.

“You know it won’t be the same. Four minutes, thirty-five seconds!” Michael taps his watch.

Eleanor raises her hands; “Who Good Place i’ this again?”

“You can’t keep using that. Four minutes, thirty! I better see you then.” He fires a finger gun at her and winks before turning around, making his way up the steps to the house.

She watches him go, chin rested on the back of her hand. There’s no way to ignore the flutter in her chest whenever Michael is near, when he’s slides down to sit next to her on the couch, when she falls asleep in his arms. There’s also no way to ignore that teeny itch she feels between her thighs when she sees him in those jeans. To think, she had once asked him if he even had a butt. At the time she hadn’t been looking. Too busy trying to avoid eternal damnation.

Lucky for Michael, or maybe not, she has all the time in the world to check out some angel booty or whatever else she feels like doing.

Eleanor rolls onto her back and closes her eyes. She remembers the kiss from the other night, fuelled by a bottle of tequila and seeing Chid with his ‘real Eleanor’. She had thrown herself towards Michael, the best and only available option really, this time not out of any demon’s conditioning but her own pathetic desperation. She realised now how it must have looked and why Michael was so quick to reject her, among other reasons. Poor guy. There would be no way of Eleanor being able to make a move on him now without it seeming like there was another agenda behind it. No possible way he would think that she was kissing him…simply because she had feelings for him. Because she liked him.

Which she did. Of course, she did. Michael is…Michael.

Kind, caring, goofy, creative, funny, magical, mysterious, rocking that cool older guy bod while still moving as if he had the energy of someone Eleanor’s age or younger. And when he does get all serious, when he puts on that Boss of Heaven voice and fixes that stern gaze on her, it hits her authoritarian kink in the bullseye. Then, the cherry on top, the fact that he turned her own. He’s forbidden fruit, one she’s allowed to hold onto, to stroke, to smell, but never to bite into. Hmm. He looks like he’d enjoy a little bite.

A rather warm flush runs through her lower body. Shouldn’t really be thinking of those things. Not because it’s…wrong. Ugh. It’s not. She’s free to feel and think what she wants, of course, when it comes to…that. But Michael said no. Off the table. He’s no sleaze. He’s…the friend she needs right now. 

In terms of roomies, she’s certainly had a lot worse. She’s been a lot worse. Forget how much she screwed over and took advantage of previous roommates. She can’t have been much fun for Michael these past few months. Sure, he clearly liked being out here, having a vacation away from work, getting to try all these little ‘human’ hobbies he’s so fascinated with. But he could have had a lot more entertaining company. Eleanor hopes she’ll have enough energy and confidence, one day soon, to be the life of the party again. For now, the best she can do is try to be a fun roommate, play silly games on the sand, snuggle up on the sofa watching Netflix, drinking margaritas on the patio at night before bed. He always looks happy enough to have her to talk to, or rather spoken at. And he never has trouble understanding her somewhat stunted responses.

He knows her, her entire life story, the good parts and the dirt. Boy, there’s a lot of dirt. And still he wants her. He…likes her. In whatever way that is from him, she’ll take it. Everybody wants to be wanted, don’t they?

Eleanor rubs at her eyes, the glare from the afternoon sun beginning to sting even through her lids. She reaches for her sunglasses. Fork! She left them in the front pocket of Michael’s shirt!

No big deal. She won’t go back inside just yet. Make him wait a little bit more.

It’s only fair…she had to wait for him. She had to wait for…Oh, fork.

Eleanor tries to cover the upper half of her face with her arm. Everything suddenly became so piercingly bright. No matter what she uses to block it, her elbow, her book, the towel, the glaring red spots in front of her eyelids only burn hotter. She can’t open her eyes! When she tries, all she can see is white.

Did she look into the centre of the sun without realising? Or did Michael turn up the brightness to torture her so she’d go indoors? No, that can’t be right. Angels don’t torture. Angels…save.

“Michael!” She tries calling for him; “Michael, something’s wro-!”

Her words die in her throat as her temperature begins to skyrocket. It’s been hot all day, every day, perfect tropical weather, not a cloud in the sky. Sometimes it peaks from noon till three but never to the point it’s unbearable. Eleanor had grown up on a baking tray like everyone else in Arizona. She had no problem with sunny, warm weather every day.

But this? This isn’t normal. It’s not. Liveable.

More like someone has trapped her in a tanning booth and turned up the UV to max levels.

More like she’s confined on a train that’s hurtling towards the centre of Hell and every time she thinks about how hot it is it gets another degree hotter.

_“Oops! You just thought about it!”_

She feels the sweat start to drip off of her, trickling down her neck and arms. She wishes she still had Michael’s shirt. She’d be able to cover herself, protect her skin from the blistering rays. She tries to use the towel she’s laying instead but it’s too soft, heated as much as she is after being laid outside since mid-morning.

There’s nothing to shade herself with. She can’t run for shelter, not when she can’t see where she’s going. She grits her teeth, feeling like her brain is going to explode from the sensory overdose.

She wants to scream for Michael. For Janet. Chidi. Tahani. Damnit, even Jason, anyone!

Her throat is too dry. As parched as it was from the moment she was thrown in her cell until, all those many days and weeks later, when Michael fed her that glass of ice water. Vocal chords are singed and busted up like faulty electric wiring. It hurts to scream but she tries anyway.

Michael! MICHAEL, PLEASE! HELP!

She grabs the towel and curls up in the slightly cooler sand until even that begins to warm all too quickly from her body heat. She covers her head with the towel. Fork it, she can hear the train. She can hear it racing all too quick along the rails, through all those inter-dimensional barriers, Trevor laughing as she tries in vain to pry open one of the windows to jump out into oblivion. She had called out for Michael then as well. Stop the train. Don’t let her go. She’s sorry, she’s so sorry!

_“Oh, honey bunny, he can’t hear you now. Even if he could, weren’t you paying attention? He gave you to me, remember? You’re not welcome there anymore. Trash has no place in Heaven.”_

He’d grabbed her wrist and forced her to face him as her clothes stuck to her sweltering skin with each passing, hotter, second.

The look in his eyes as he’d smiled at her, finally breaking with the horror of what was happening – what was going to happen to her – finally sunk in.

 _“Your place is with me…fucking whore.”_ The filter had gone.

There was no disguising what she was, according to him.

His hands take hold of a wrist each, fingers curling firmly around like shackles, pinning her back against the door. She dares to spit at him, the water turning to steam before it even splashes his face. Trevor chuckles before slapping her.

_“Still thinking about how hot it is, babe?”_

There’s nothing else she can think about. She tries to focus on something else. Anything. She dares to look at him. Think of how much she hates him. Nothing else. There is nothing more…

Fork, it’s so forking hot! Fork! It gets even hotter.

She feels the soles of her shoes melt, wooden floor burning into her feet, as if she were standing on a heated saucepan. She screams. Oh god, make it stop, make it stop!

Even though they’re leaving the Good Place, the blue skies drifting back away from them and the train descending into Hell, it gets brighter instead of darker. Intense light glares from every window. There’s no way to escape it. They’re riding into the heart of the sun.

_“What’s cookin’, good lookin’? I’m a twisted Firestarter and we’re on a highway to Hell! Burn, baby, burn! Oh, I got a million of these for the trip…”_

He ignores her cries of agony, writhing against his hold, and presses himself close, roughly kissing her as she shrieks for salvation that will never come.

Let her go! Motherforker, let her go!

She tries to bite his tongue, rip that thing from his mouth, but he pulls back too quick, taking a chunk of her bottom lip with him. Eleanor cries out, again, feeling her mouth swell painfully, blood quickly pouring down her chin.

She opens her eyes to see him…No. Oh god, no.

Her horrified gaze is reflected in his glasses.

Michael grins, wickedly. Her blood is staining his teeth, leaking from the corner of his mouth. He’s taller than Trevor, towering over her, making her feel as though she’s shrinking in his wake. The sheer hatred that had given her a burst of adrenaline to fight back before is replaced with pure, childlike fear and betrayal that paralyses her. This can’t be happening! Oh, fork, please, anything but this! Not him, please!

The animalistic lust in his eyes flickers as the light splinters her vision again. A fallen angel in a dark suit and black bow-tie is swapped out with a concerned dude in a calming blue shirt.

“Eleanor? Eleanor, it’s me. I’m here. You’re okay.”

No, no, she’s not forking okay!

Can’t he feel it? Can’t he feel how hot it is? Isn’t he blinded by all the lights? She scrapes her fingers into her arms and is convinced its about to peel off, wrinkled and rotten beneath the intense rays. It will crisp and blacken if it gets any hotter. She’ll sizzle and pop with welts and blisters. That’s how she was when he dragged her off the train.

When he first forked her, raped her, in her cell. She’d been nothing but a well cooked piece of meat.

Michael reaches his hand out again towards her.

And then, in another flash, her friend is gone. The twisted up, Trevor-fied version of him returns, laughing mockingly, completely in control of her. He laughs at her for believing that he ever cared about her. He laughs at her for believing that she was worth saving. She sobs. Howls.

When the kind Michael, her Michael, appears in the next unexpected flash, he mouths words she can no longer hear over her own screaming. When his fingers brush against her shoulder, she yelps and huddles back, curling away like a frightened, beaten dog. Stop it! Stop burning her! Too hot! Go away. Leave her alone.

Why couldn’t anyone just leave her the fork alone?!

The torture lasts for what feels like hours before everything finally, at forking last, begins to dim and cool down. Just in time for the darkness to save her.

*

Michael snaps his fingers.

He hadn’t wanted to. This whole memory altering was still a little experimental. It had been a last resort when every other attempt to calm her failed. He watches her go still on the towel, her chest not even moving to breathe. A fresh corpse waiting to be reanimated, just like when she first arrived in his office. He only rebooted her by a single second. With any luck, she won’t be a blank slate when she wakes, her memories only being from her time on Earth. No recollection of him or the other humans or…the ‘real’ Bad Place.

Maybe he should have erased all of that for her. Wouldn’t it be a, what’s that word…anti-cruelty? At least to take away the latter, to the moment were Trevor herded her onto the train. He could wake her up in his office, convince her that she passed out from fear and he arrived, just in time, to take her off. To save her. He could erase the humans memories of her being gone as well and just get all his employees to play along.

No one would know the truth. Except him. And Trevor and Shawn. If they found out that Michael had undone all of Trevor’s ‘work’, he’d be in for it, and they’d force him to make Eleanor remember it, to relive the torture all over again.

Michael sighs and strokes her hair. He’d take it all away from her, if he could. Even himself.

*

There’s something cool and damp over her face, filtering out the light. It’s a relief after what she can remember before she blacked out but also…what the fork?

She reaches to paw at it, feeling the material of the wet cloth.

“Careful. Take it slow.”

Eleanor frowns, “M-Michael?”

“Oh, good. You remember me.”

That’s really not the most comforting thing for anyone to hear when they’ve just come to. She carefully eases the towel away from her eyes, squinting, letting them adjust to her dim surroundings. She’s indoors, laying on the sofa, still in her bikini, Michael’s – or, let’s be fair, her – shirt cast over her mid-section.

She feels for her sunglasses in the pocket, but she doesn’t need them now. The sun is hidden away behind a tick sheet of grey clouds as heavy rain patters against the windows. It’s never even so much as drizzled since she arrived here.

Eleanor turns her head to see the Architect sat, watching over her, perched on the coffee table.

“What happened?” She asks, feeling a little queasy, like she just suffered some serious headrush.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” He asks, his fingers curled together, in front of his mouth.

She tries to concentrate; “I was on the beach…You nagged me to come indoors, I said no, because as you’ve mentioned before – while we’re here, I’m the boss of you, so I’m gonna be milking that cow good, dude.” She manages a smile which he shares; “…And then, out of nowhere, it just got so hot…Everything went so bright like it was blinding me and…I was back on the train.” Eleanor takes a deep breath, clutching for the shirt; “I was going back.”

She didn’t go back. She’s still here. That much is obvious and yet she has to cling to the closest tangible proof, just to be certain.

Michael hands her a cup of coffee before she even needs to ask. Mind Reading has to be one of his powers, despite how often he denies it. She still feels hot, as if she’s running a temperature without the actual fever, so she hopes that weird thing Chidi told her about a hot drink helping you to cool off actually worked and he wasn’t forking with her.

“Sooo…” Her companion says, standing up and stepping around to behind the coffee table.

“What did you do? And why are you out of coffee-hurling distance?” Eleanor narrows her eyes at him.

Michael raises his hands; “This…may have been my fault.”

God damn it! “I knew it, you turned the heat up to get me to come in, didn’t you!” Eleanor glares. He’s not even worth wasting her coffee over so she reaches for the pillow instead.

“Wait, wait! That’s not it!” He assures her, actually looking for a moment as though he were afraid of what damage she could do. With a fluffy pillow; “It wasn’t intentional. Janet told me that, having the weather stay at a constantly high temperature for so many months messed something up in the atmosphere. I’m supposed to filter it out with cooler weather every couple of weeks, kinda like a tumble dryer. Things got a bit overheated and it obviously triggered something bad, for you…I’m sorry.”

That sort of makes sense, as he describes it in simple enough terms for her. It still seems ridiculous that Heaven would need any sort of maintenance but what did she know? She’s as far from an angel as one can get before reaching the literal demons.

“Will you put down the weapon now?” He pleads.

Eleanor rolls her eyes and drops the pillow that would have trouble hurting a one year old; “Fine. You’re forgiven.” She rubs at her forehead with her free hand; “I guess I’ve been overdoing it with the tanning lately anyway. I got so used to feeling hot that I didn’t notice how much it hurt until it was too much.”

“Humans can be like frogs when they adapt too much to something. If you stick a frog in boiling water, it will leap out but if you leave it in cold water and heat it up, it won’t realise until it’s about to die.” Michael shares with her.

“Whatever scientist figured that out had way too much time on his hands.” Eleanor feels at the skin of her arms, making sure it’s not peeling off; “Still feels way too warm, man.”

“You wouldn’t let me touch you. I had to knock you out just to carry you in. Just a quick magical tranquiliser. There was a slight chance it might mess up your brain but, well, no big loss to the world there, right.”

“I still have the pillow, Michael.” Eleanor hisses at him.

“Joke, joke…” He puts up his hands again; “Anyway, it’ll be cold and wet out there for a few days, then you can get back to cooking yourself in that weird, boring hobby you humans enjoy. Until then, you have control of the TV remote. I’ll make a start on the popcorn. Will that be acceptable, your Majesty?”

She gives his over-the-top butler performance a smirk, wrinkling her nose up. She gets up and goes to her bedroom, swapping out her bikini for some leggings and a loose sweater. Lazy hot girl clothes.

When she emerges, Michael is in the kitchen, pouring melted butter into a pan on the stove.

She walks over and slides her arms around his middle. He stiffens a little, surprised, before moving one arm around to her shoulders.

“Cool enough for a hug now, I take it?” He asks, returning it as much as he can while cooking.

Eleanor gives a hum to agree, watching as he drops a single one of those seeds into the pan.

“I think we’ll need a little more than that, buddy. You know I’m not great with sharing as it is.” She needles him, gently, still attached to his side.

“You’ve never made popcorn yourself. And microwaving the kind in a bag doesn’t count.” He reminds her, “That’s how you do it, according to some girl named Cindy on YouTube. Test it with one first and then we put the rest in after it pops.”

“Oh, so that’s why it’s called that!”

“I know you’re just playing up being stupid, so you get out of actually helping.” He says, and of course he knows her all too well.

Eleanor offers to take up the pivotal role of warming up the sofa and choosing what movie to watch while Michael finishes off making the popcorn and bringing it over along with a bottle of rose wine. She can already feel her body quickly cooling down, adapting to the change in weather. She shuffles close to Michael, hogging most of the blanket over herself while letting the popcorn bowl rest between the two of them. It’s not that bad, being colder for once, when it’s balanced out with a warm comforter and Michael’s arm around her. Better than too hot and having to push every attempt at touch away.

“Any reason you chose this one?” Her couch bud asks once the plot of the film gets moving.

“Because it’s a classic.” Eleanor says and she knows that Michael is aware she’s using a low-bow definition of ‘classic’; “It’s also my favorite Christmas movie.”

“How is this a Christmas movie?” Michael asks just before Gruber and his team hold everyone hostage.

“They're at a Christmas party, that’s all you need.” Eleanor defends after shoving a handful of buttery popcorn into her mouth; “And it doesn’t have any of that schmaltzy, wholesome garbage you get with every other Christmas movie. Just hot ash-holes shooting other hot ash-holes, making one-liners and setting off explosions.”

And if there is any justice then Bruce Willis will get to go back to looking as fine as he did in Die Hard when he finally gets to the Good Place himself.

“I can understand why you’re not big on traditional Christmases.” Michael says with an edge of sympathy.

Of course, he knows. She doesn’t have to explain the reasons behind why she has zero nostalgic attachment to Christmas or the holidays, much less any other sort of care for preparing for it. Christmas didn’t mean family get-togethers, it meant ducking out of the office Secret Santa while also making sure she got the best present herself even if it wasn’t supposed to be for her. Christmas meant terrible music in every store and those damn charity runners being even more aggressively cheerful.

Wow, no wonder she belonged in the Bad Place. She takes another dig into the popcorn, aware that Michael is still looking at her rather than the movie.

“Sorry if I disrespected your bosses birthday or whatever.” Eleanor says, realising an angel is probably the last being she should be bad-mouthing Christmas to.

“Oh, there’s so many birthdays for those pagan gods, we lose track. Jesus has to share his with about three other sun deities so you can imagine the party planning nightmare that is.”

Eleanor turns to him; “You’re shirting me again.”

“Yeah, I’ve never been invited to any of their parties.” Michael says, a little mournful; “…To be honest, I’ve never even put up a Christmas tree. I was thinking of having it in the neighbourhood someday, but you wouldn’t have to be involved, I’d be happy to make you your own Grinch house on the hill.”

“Appreciated.” She nods, happy with that, “Only things I love about Christmas are presents and you give me anything I want every day, so I already got my own private Santa.”

“I suppose Santa is a bit less lame than an angel so I’ll take it.” Michael concedes.

“Santa’s way hotter as well.”

“Yes, Eleanor, your file did contain all of your sex dreams, we don’t need to go into that.” The fact that he sounds more disturbed and tired rather than interested takes away from the creep factor a little. Or maybe she’s just nearly impossible to shame.

She comes too close to telling Michael that he’s the hottest Santa she’s ever met and she once took her cousin’s kid to the mall just so she could sit on one’s lap that looked like Chris Hemsworth.

Would that be too much flirting? Too close to the line Michael has made clear he doesn’t think they should cross? Surely, him having knowledge of her most intimate dreams already sent that line hurtling off into the horizon. What was a bit of kissing and groping when they were already so touchy-feely with one another to the point there was rarely space between them?

Something else manages to distract her from her dirty mind’s descent.

“You’d really wanna do all that stuff? Put up a tree, decorations, all that Christmassy crab?” she asks.

Michael hums and nods; “I’d like to see what all the fuss is about, even though I know it’s all a marketing ploy. Humans seem so happy at Christmas or whatever holiday they’re celebrating. I know it’s not always the case, such as yours, but…Just another for my human bucket list, I guess. Right after putting a quarter in a gumball machine.”

“You could ask Janet for a gumball machine right now.”

“It’s not the same.” He says and eats some more popcorn.

She doesn’t understand it. Everything here felt as real to her as it did on Earth, but then she was able to say she had experienced both places to know. Michael has never been on Earth, as far as she’s aware. He’s never indulged all the little pleasures along with the knowledge they were finite or balanced out with a big dollop of anxiety and pain. That, supposedly, is what made mortal lives so meaningful. She can already hear Chidi, in the back of her head, pulling out a Nietzsche quote.

Screw that, Eleanor countered. Nietzsche never had to spend what felt like an eternity being burnt alive, repeatedly raped by a demon, be beaten until every bone shattered, left to bleed out like a slaughtered pig, and then rinse and repeat. Eleanor had more than her fair share of suffering, she was more than happy to go with pleasure from now on, never mind if it took any meaning from her existence. She wasn’t mortal anymore anyway, technically. 

Michael has never known true suffering either. She would never wish that on him. She wishes she could make him appreciate how lucky he was to be one of the Good Guys. Far, far away from the fire and brimstone and unfortunate souls. The most pain the dude seemed to know was…being lonely?

Not being invited to Christmas parties?

She sneaks a glance up at him, watching him snicker at John McCain’s ‘welcome to the party’.

Well. Maybe she could do to fix this. It was only fair, after all he did for her. And Christmas was supposed to be about giving as well as receiving, right? Maybe there was some truth to that Hallmark bullshirt after all.

*

His dreams that night are pretty awesome, for once. He had been abseiling down the side of a skyscraper, one hand on the rope while the other wielded an assault rifle. It was the first time he felt some sort of appeal to holding a gun, especially when he got to kick in through a window and shoot a load of terrorists with Trevor’s face as their masks. Upon waking, before opening his eyes, Michael could admit in his head that it had been a good choice of movie.

He shifts and lets out a hum, feeling the relaxed, smaller frame of the human in his arms. It was a relief to be more or less certain that she’d had a peaceful nights sleep as well. Given the awful flashback she suffered the day before, he’d been prepared for further aftershocks. She certainly hadn’t stirred him. He can hear how steady her pulse is, feel her even breathing, the soft rise and fall as she stays curled against him. These are the best mornings, where everything is fine.

Michael opens his eyes a little, greeted by Eleanor’s slumbering face close to his, enamoured by the tender glow of her white aura. It will gain more colors during the day, sharp and bright and vibrant as always, but it always starts off this way. It’s beautiful. She is…

His attention is caught by an unusual sight outside the window. What in the name of Charley Sheen’s PR rep?

He gently nudges his human’s shoulder; “Eleanor,” he whispers, “Eleanor, wake up.”

“M’new phone, who this?” she mumbles, turning to hide her face in Michael’s shoulder.

“You don’t have a phone. Just look out the window.”

Eleanor rubs at her eyes and rolls over so her back is against him. She leans up on her elbow, releasing a large yawn.

“Wow…Would ya look at that!”

A flurry of thick snowflakes continues to fall from the overcast sky on what already has to be over a feet of snow that has built up during the night, blanketing the entire beach and framing the bottom of Eleanor’s bedroom window. The early morning sun barely peeks out from behind the clouds, just enough to make the white ground shimmer. He waits for Eleanor to ask him if he knew about this but, for once, he was as surprised as she no doubt is.

Maybe Janet needed to take the temperature lower to clean out the air before it can be built back up again so Eleanor can get back to sunbathing to her heart’s content? Odd. He would have expected her to pre-warn him at least. Not that it isn’t a lovely surprise to wake up to.

“Don’t get snow like that in Phoenix.” Eleanor laments, her hand moving over Michael’s as he drapes his over her side, watching it over her head; “Usually all grey slushy stuff which you can’t even drink like a real slushy.”

Which she knows from trying, little dummy.

“It’s the first time I’ve had any snow here since I built the place…” Michael reveals, a little dazzled. He’s felt snow before. He’s been to neighbourhoods where humans are trapped beneath frozen lakes or forced to climb endless mountains naked.

This was much more pleasant to just sit and admire.

He holds Eleanor a bit closer, knowing she must be getting a lot cooler now. He can’t see her face but judging by the tinge of yellow in her aura, he knows she’s smiling too, even if warmer weather is her preference.

“Y’know what this calls for, right? Hot chocolate. With as many marshmallows as you can fit in a mug!” She suggests.

“For breakfast?” Surely cocoa is more of a pre-bedtime thing.

“Whose Good Place?”

Michael says, helpless to resist; “Marshmallow crammed hot chocolate, it is.” He releases her and gets off the bed, moving to open the bedroom door.

He then almost trips on a large cardboard box that’s in the way, along with several others scattered throughout the room. He blinks, feeling rather put off. First the glitch with the weather and now all of this random, unexpected stuff appearing? Michael was used to faking ‘problems’ in the neighbourhood but it was unsettling when they appeared to be genuine.

“Janet.” He tries calling, “Janet!”

And now his Janet isn’t responding?! His fingers itch at his side. Something is forked up. What is-

He turns and finds Eleanor standing behind him in the bedroom doorway.

“Oh. I gave Janet the morning off, so to speak.” She confesses, suddenly a lot more awake than she had been in bed a moment ago, her eyes bright with a cheeky spark; “Basically I said she doesn’t have to respond to us until lunch.”

She sidles around him and moves to the nearest box, crouching down. He can already work out that the clever human knows what is going on better than he does.

“Why…? When did you tell her that?”

“Last night, before bed, when I asked her to make it snow as well.” Eleanor begins tearing open the scotch tape.

“You did that? And what’s all this?”

She grins up at him and then opens the box, digging out something soft and red. She stands and holds two Santa hats in her hand, offering one out to him.

“Christmas decorations. We’re gonna…deck the halls with bells of holly, buddy.” She grins as he takes the hat and she fits her own on, looking adorable as the white fluffy ball hangs down to hit her cheek; “And I realise this place doesn’t have any halls so it’ll be deck the living room-slash-kitchen.”

Michael folds the hat over in his hands, glancing down at it in stunned awe. If he had lungs, he’s sure the air would be knocked out of them.

He looks down to see what is promised in the rest of the box. Tinsel. Fairy lights. More tinsel.

“Eleanor…” He says, overwhelmed; “You don’t have to do this. I mean, for one, it’s not even technically Christmas-.”

“Well, Janet explained that to me, that afterlife calanders don’t match Earth calanders, so my thought is, fork it, Christmas is when we want! And I choose today. Or, tomorrow, or a whole week, whatever.”

“Of course, you could have Christmas whenever you want, but I know you hate this stuff.”

“Hate is a strong word.” She shrugs, bashfully; “I mean…annoyed, sickened, bored, can’t be forked, maybe those were my feelings with Earth Christmases but, this is different. And, most of all, it’s not all about me. I know you keep saying this is my Good Place but it’s not. It’s yours, as much as anyone elses, bud. You put all the work into it. You deserve a…holiday bonus.”

A bonus. If only Eleanor knew that such things weren’t expected in his department, much less earned. He tries not to blush and fits the hat snug on his head, moving the ball to the side.

His Arizona girl grins; “Ha. Knew I was right about the Santa thing.”

“What?”

“Never mind,” she waves it off and starts pulling the long threads of red and gold tinsel out; “Come on then, help me get these on the wall. We’re gonna do the whole thing by hand, human style! No Janet or angel magic shortcuts! Except for the tree. I mean, you’re welcome to get all lumberjacked up and go chop one down in the forest but don’t expect me to come. I’m still working on the whole generosity thing.”

“That’s fair enough.” Michael nods, thinking he will settle for summoning a pine tree in the corner of the room; “By the way, I’m reasonably sure it’s ‘boughs’ of holly.”

“Pssh! No way! That makes no sense! Everyone knows it’s bells at Christmas!” Eleanor scoffs, tossing some green ribbon over his shoulder, and Michael is far too besotted to correct her.

He starts to feel that buzz of childlike excitement as he and Eleanor get into the groove, hanging up all the flimsy and garish decorations around their spacious but relatively small beach house. The only times Michael uses magic is to make the tree appear in the corner and also to add in a fireplace below the mounted TV, because apparently fireplaces are compulsory at Winter. Eleanor turns on the radio as they start to dress the tree.

She seems to have already prepared a playlist of festive songs.

“This one is the best! Especially when you’re a kid, ‘cause it has swearing, probably sums up everyones’ folks on the holidays.” Or at least, her own.

_“They've got cars big as bars  
They've got rivers of gold  
But the wind goes right through you;  
It's no place for the old.”_

Michael watches her sing along as he slides a large golden ball onto one of the branches. There’s a flicker of red and green against the tree. He hasn’t turned the lights on yet.

“For someone who claims to hate Christmas, you sure are getting into the spirit.” He teases her.

Eleanor bites her lip, straightening a reindeer ornament; “It’s only the company I had that made it annoying. Warring parents, annoying co-workers, overly religious boyfriend, hardcore atheist boyfriend, commercials…Company isn’t too bad this time around.”

He catches her gaze as they both sit crouched beneath the tree. He knows this is probably the most effort she’s put in to doing something nice for someone else more than herself…except for outing herself as a mistake to save Chidi, maybe. This act of selflessness isn’t painful for her. She’s enjoying it. She’s enjoying…doing something for Michael.

He ignores the urge to kiss her, making a mental note to ensure the mistletoe is only put up in uncomfortable locations. She’s not even properly dressed, still in her pjs, hair unbrushed beneath that Santa hat. She’s gorgeous.

“I think the tree is well and truly done. Just needs one more thing.” Eleanor says after they’ve covered nearly every inch of green; “You need to shrink yourself down and park your butt at the top of that thing, buddy.”

“Very funny. I could just as easily turn you into a star and put you up there.” He teases.

“And if I were a star, I’d enjoy setting that pine and ribbon monstrosity we created ablaze.” She throws back with a smirk.

They compromise and Eleanor places a tiny Beyonce doll at the top. Good enough.

Once all the boxes are empty, decorations strung up on the tree, on the walls, over the fireplace, a holly wreath on the door, Eleanor tugs him into the kitchen, fetching some glasses out of the top cupboard. Next on the list; making eggnog.

“You thought churro dogs were bad, dude? Wait till you get a taste of this.” She warns; “It’s like a cholesterol pumped latte with alcohol. And that’s me being nice.”

Michael knows that she’s not mixing the drink up from any family recipe. Only from her barmaid skills from her first afterschool job, at eleven. She had spent that Christmas collecting glasses and wiping down tables while watching other families have dinner and drinks together. He often wishes he could defy the laws of time and go back to rectify the darker parts of her childhood.

He still smiles when she hands him the completed beverage and they raise a toast.

“To the sweetest and smoothest angel that the Good Place ever produced.” She winks at him.

He ignores the tightening ball of guilt in his chest.

“To the best and bravest human in Arizona. No contest.” He at least knows that his toast is true. Michael swigs his drink and winces before the aftertaste kicks in; “…Wow, that is awful. Can I have another?”

Eleanor giggles; “That’s definitely the Christmas spirit.”

The drinks are followed up with simple tree-shaped cookies which they eat while watching another of Eleanor’s top five holiday flicks. Michael argues that this one, surely, is more of a Halloween film.

“It can be two things.” Eleanor responds as they snuggle on the sofa with their snacks.

She draws out the obvious comparison to him and Jack Skellington, fascinated by his first brush with the festive season.

“Well…if I was evil, maybe.” How little she knows.

“He’s not evil. Just because they live in a scary town and like scary things, doesn’t make him evil. Now, the creepy doctor keeping the ragdoll as a slave? He’s evil.”

“Spoilers.” Michael complains, though it’s rather easy to see. He has a suspicion that she’ll find her freedom and the Pumpkin King who doesn’t look like a pumpkin will fall in love with her.

That’s the way it goes.

He’s honestly not sure which one he identifies with more as the movie progresses.

“So, we’ll have the big meal and stuff tomorrow, right?” Michael asks her later, after the movie is over and they’re back in the kitchen, this time making mulled wine.

“Yeah, which you can have the pleasure of cooking. I’ll…make the cranberry sauce.” She offers, so magnanimous.

It’s starting to get darker outside. Somehow they managed to make the whole day fly by, Eleanor never seeming to fail in coming up with ‘classic Christmas traditions’ for them to try out. Michael reminded her that, as she said herself, they had as much time as they wanted, there was no rush to do everything today. He can see the energy she’s putting into this, for him.

And perhaps, just a little bit, for herself as well? To have the nice, wholesome and sweet Christmas she never had?

“Wait,” Michael pauses, listening to the radio; “Is he really complaining that she rejected the vital organ he gave her as a present? I mean that is a bench move but even I know humans don’t find being handed a fresh heart endearing.”

“I think he’s being metaphorical, dude.” Eleanor smiles at him, “It’s not one of my favorites. Bit too mopey for me. Here we go.” She turns the dial and finds something with more of a kick.

_“Make my wish come true,  
All I want for Christmas is you.”_

Eleanor nods her head, “Yeah, c’mon! Good Place Christmas party and this time we’re the only ones invited!”

She grins and tugs him into dancing with her, very nearly losing the hat on her head. Michael meets her enthusiasm, the both of them probably helped more by the fact they’ve drunk more booze than eaten decent, non-sugary food throughout the day. They can raise the roof, make as much noise as they want, they have no neighbours to worry about disturbing. No co-workers within earshot to see the obvious heresy he’s committing.

Michael lifts Eleanor by her waist before she almost trips over one of the side-tables that they’ve placed a hideous singing toy elf on. She laughs and throws her arms around his neck.

“Hey, how frozen do you reckon the sea is? Could we go ice skate?”

“Maybe not in this condition.” Michael lets her down easy; “We could probably do a lot of slipping and sliding.”

“That sounds way more fun than ice skating, let’s do that.”

“After some more food, we’ll do whatever you want.” He promises her, stroking a strand of her hair from under the loose cap; “I need to think what to get you for a present now.”

“No presents, buddy. I get enough presents every day from you…This…This is a good ‘nuff gift. Best I’ve ever had.” She pokes his chest and leans in to rest her head beneath his chin as he sways her to the last closing seconds of the song.

Michael holds her close. He couldn’t agree with her more.

“Eleanor. Thank you so much.”

_Thank you for being a candle to guide me out of that lava pit. Thank you for being a burst of joy in a job designed around misery. Thank you for the ugly yellow toddler and the paperclip bracelet. Thank you for teaching me how to steal tickets. Thank you for being there for me even though I didn’t need you. Thank you for needing me. Thank you for giving me the chance to not be a monster. Thank you for letting me have a taste of what being human is like. Thank you for trusting me, even though you’re wrong to. Thank you for caring about me enough to do this, even though I’m the reason you suffered in the first place. Thank you for this little moment of bliss before I inevitably lose it…lose you._

Perhaps Thanksgiving would have been a more fitting holiday for her to introduce him to.

*

The next time Christmas is celebrated at the beach house, Tahani is in charge of the decorations. Michael and Eleanor had already woken up early to get everything decorated and ready before the rest of the gang woke up, to get it looking just as it did a year before. The look of surprise and glee on their faces had been a perfect sight, until Eleanor had spotted the twitch in Tahani’s mouth and how she forced out every compliment on how ‘random’ and ‘like a child’s first drawing’ it appeared. Eleanor asked her if she wanted to redecorate and Tahani had agreed with a tearful plea.

Now, here the six of them all were, sat around the roaring fireplace after finishing Christmas dinner, stuffed and sated on turkey and chocolate log. It’s technically their second Christmas this year, after having to endure a fake one complete with monster snow men and evil trees going on a rampage. After the carnage had all been cleared up, Michael managed to sneak them all away onto a train for a much calmer but still highly entertaining holiday.

“My turn,” Chidi unrolls the slip of paper from his cracker; “What do you suffer from if you eat too many Christmas decorations?”

They all shrug.

“Tinsle-itus.” He finishes before tossing another stupid pun over his shoulder.

“Aww, man. I think I had that when I was a kid! Someone told me those balls on the tree had chocolate inside. I did not feel good after!” Jason comments.

“And you didn’t work out the truth until after you ate the whole thing?” Eleanor asks.

He shrugs; “They gave me chocolate at the hospital so, they were kinda right!”

“Speaking of hospitals, I’m convinced that dinner has killed me all over again. It truly was delicious, Michael. I’m going to tell my friend Gordon that compared to you he’s a, to use his favorite phase, forking amateur!” Tahani hiccups and it’s impossible not to laugh at hearing her swear, even with the filter on.

Michael blushes. Eleanor can see that, even after all the time they’ve spent together now, he finds it strange to be on the receiving end of their affections.

“And those snow dragons were the bomb! I can’t wait to ride Ice Burgtles again tomorrow!” Jason praises him, offering and getting a high five from the demon.

“Not to mention acing the last few exams I’ve given. You’ve come a long way from splattering me with the run-over remains of four fake workmen, buddy.” Chidi reaches to pat his shoulder.

“Well, if you miss that at all,” he raises his hand to snap his fingers.

“NO!” Everyone including Eleanor chants, herself reaching to grab his wrist, before they all collapse into laughter, drunk on both the eggnog and the rare opportunity to relax and chill out, not a demon in sight except the one they’ve chosen.

Eleanor holds Michael’s hand as she sits next to him, still remembering their first Christmas together, back when everything seemed so different and yet felt just as warm and loving as the room feels now. Back then, she was already falling in love with Michael, even though she had no idea what he really was. Or maybe she did. The mask he wore seemed truer to the Michael she knew now more than any malicious torture-master or destructive fire squid she had met. So much had changed since then. And here they still were, together, now with the bonus of having even more love in the house.

“Honestly, guys, you don’t need to heap on the praise. A decent Christmas getaway is the least you all deserve after what you all have to go through in my neighbourhood.” He tells them all.

“It would be a hell of a lot worse without your heads-up, man.” Eleanor reminds him; “You protect us from the worst of it and we all appreciate it. Which is why, even though we all agreed on no presents, we did make this for you. Our Honorary Human.”

Janet presents Michael with the ‘Human Starter Kit’ they got together to make for him. He opens it like a kid unwrapping their brand new Playstation, beaming in delight at all the useless trinkets he will probably never use, from car keys to bandaids to his own fitbit. Little things Eleanor and the others have heard him gawp over in wonder before, now all his to enjoy.

It brings the big, sappy demon to tears.

“Oh, you guys…” he sniffles; “I’m so glad you put tissues in this thing!” He says, using one to wipe his face as they all laugh. Jason reaches out to rub his shoulder.

Michael sighs and shakes his head.

“I don’t deserve this. I haven’t gotten any of you to the Good Place and I’m honestly no closer. My last ten millionth attempt came close but, as Janet will confirm, nearly ended up ripping a teeny hole in the fabric of space and time.”

Janet nods; “It’s true. The multiverse was on the brink of destruction!” Not even she will call that a fun fact.

“But you’re trying, man, and I’ve told you countless times, that’s the most human thing you can do.” Chidi reassures before looking at Eleanor; “You keep trying no matter how bleak it seems, that’s being the strongest human you can be.”

Eleanor returns his smile, knowing it’s a tiny toast for her as well, not that she will steal Michael’s moment here. Chidi is one of the few in the room who knows that she still has the odd nightmare. Chidi is the only one, aside from Michael, she’s come somewhat close to talking about her true experiences with Trevor. He’s been her rock, her most trusting friend, especially when Michael can’t always be there. She raises her glass and winks, giving him back her own thanks. He’s the one who helped truly reform both a demon and a dirtbag, after all.

“I will never stop trying. I swear on this perfect collection of pointless human trash that I will never stop trying to get you guys to your real paradise.” Michael assures them all.

Tahani reaches to squeeze his hand; “We trust you. And, with any luck, our next Christmas will be in the real Good Place. To our hopelessly hopeful quest! Cheers!”

“What she said.” Eleanor agrees and they raise their glasses in a toast.

She catches Michael’s gaze again, the next moment the others are distracted, back to reading out bad jokes or sharing their own funny childhood stories. She touches his cheek and leans in to kiss his lips, softly, no need for mistletoe.

“Happy Christmas, Michael.” She whispers to him before wrapping him in a hug; “Stop being such a worrier. I’m the one who’s meant to have the panic attacks.” Which she hasn’t in many months, thankfully.

Sometimes it felt as though the demons were turning the heat up, one or two getting suspicious when a torture scheme didn’t go quite to plan, or when Michael diverted something about to harm them. Maybe it was her paranoia talking, but she couldn’t shake the feeling they were being monitored. Watched. Janet says she’s the only surveillance available…but Eleanor knows she will never know how it feels to be carefree again.

All she can do is find as much joy in these little moments of wonder, with the six of them, especially together. She feels Michael’s hands move over her back.

“I’m afraid of failing you. All of you.” He confesses against her ear.

“You probably will. But then you’ll try again and again and I know, one day, you’ll get it right.” She assures him; “Welcome to being human. It’s a buzzkill. But you’ll love it.”

“I know I will.” He kisses her cheek; “Happy Christmas, Eleanor.”


	6. Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eleanor wonders if she can learn to trust the hands of an 'angel' who sent her to Hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt the need to write some post-whump fluff (with a bit of angst peppered in because it's unavoidable with this story) and I missed these babies. Plus Cecret made a comment way back about wanting to read more about Michael's massaging skills so here we go.

His hands had been the first to touch her after she died.

Up until that moment, she hadn’t been convinced everything around her was real. The chair supporting her butt, the floor beneath her feet and all of her surroundings may have seemed tangible enough. But combined with being told that she had died and that she was now in ‘Heaven’, so to speak, which didn’t fit in with any mainstream religions view of the afterlife but only to the wacked out visions of a Canadian stoner…kinda made her start to wait for the moment she opened her eyes to find herself passed out in Madison’s bathtub again.

Then Michael had lead her out of his office for a welcoming tour. When she’d asked if he was God, he’d made a joke about only being some middle management angel, multiple layers below a malevolent frog overlord that nearly scared the shirt outta her. He was only kidding and, strange as it was, it was kind of a relief to know the great immortal being in charge of this had a sense of humor. And wasn’t too bad looking for an older dude (probably way older than Eleanor could hope to guess).

He'd put his hands on her arms, on her back, never for too long. Little brushes of his fingertips against her shirt as he showed her around his own pocket of Paradise he’d designed himself. The Good Place.

His touch grounded her. It confirmed that this wasn’t all a wild acid trip or being hooked up to a nerdy ex boyfriend’s VR headset. She was here. And she wasn’t alone.

Normally Eleanor would have a problem with older men getting way too close and touchy feely unless they were paying for her drinks. But there were two things that made her allow Michael’s contact. One, even she’s not dumb enough to try to sass an immortal being she only just found out existed along with an afterlife complete with magic. Two, she kinda liked the whole authoritative air about him. His touch didn’t feel sleazy or too personal. His touch was soothing, just like his voice.

_Just like Sam….Oh, damn it, Eleanor, you’re in your thirties! Move on! Preferably to someone without feathers or a hand up his ash!_

He told her that she was okay. At that point, who was she to try to question if that was right?

It’s only when he said who she was, who he thought she was, and his hands were on her shoulders, his voice telling her that she’s special, everything started to crumble within her. The video in town had already sewn doubts that there had been a huge fork up but this…She was no lawyer. No savior. She could agree that she was ‘special’ in a lot of ways, none of which she thought someone like Michael would appreciate.

He seemed a sweet enough guy, or whatever he was. The longer she had stayed, the less likely it seemed to her that those hands which had welcomed her and guided her could ever be used against her, to hurt her. No. It was the world around them, rendered unstable by Eleanor’s presence, which seemed far more dangerous than the silver angel in charge.

Then came that day, that wonderful but pointless day, when he’d let her be the one to touch him, to take the lead. He’d let her slide her hand into his long fingers and tug him towards the bowling alley. She had been the clingy one that day and he had no problem with it.

Eleanor had dared to hope, just for a moment, that she could get close enough to Michael that perhaps she could tell him the truth, just as she had Chidi. And he would like her enough to agree to keep quiet about the whole thing. Find another way to fix all the sink holes and raining trash without the need to throw Eleanor into a pit of eternal hellfire. Seeing that twinkle in his eye, hearing him cheer as he made his strike, feeling the warmth from that smile when he thanked her…she’d been so certain that she was charming him as she had nearly every guy who came into her life. She’d been sure that her plan was working and that, not only would she be able to keep her promise and take away Michael’s stress, but she was about to gain her own loyal immortal guardian in the process. Michael would be wrapped around her little finger.

Well. That hadn’t gone to plan at all.

If only she’d had just one more day with him. If only she had managed to get him to binge the first season of Real Housewives with her, a tub of fried shrimp between them, he might have been all hers. But no, he had to get on with his work, he had to get in his funk complete with the saddest hoodie she’d ever laid eyes on. Her promise to help him, to be there for him, had only seemed to make things worse as he offered to throw himself into the fire. Sunfire, this time. Which lead to Janet’s murder, Chidi’s anxiety attack…and now this.

“Oh. Hello.”

Eleanor steps behind Michael, her hand reaching for his wrist.

The demon who just tricked him into opening a tin of fire snakes looks like a weedy but kinda hot in a smarmy way dude. But the way his eyes pierce into her is chilling as fork. She feels like a little kid cowering behind a grown-up’s knee. Though, in her case, it had usually been her dad cowering behind his four-year-old as the drug dealers collecting his debt approached.

“You look like a piece of crab. Are you Eleanor?” Trevor asks but he clearly already knows.

Eleanor doesn’t want to confirm it. She wants to hide behind Michael, forever if need be, or at least until the creep gets back on his big, black train and pisses off away from here.

But he’s telling her to go with him. Now. It’s all happening so fast.

When she tries to plead with Michael, all he can give in return is to barter with Trevor for a few extra moments where she can say goodbye to her friends. That’s it.

He’s not handing her over to the devil but he may as well be.

Eleanor had always considered herself to be strong-willed. Having to survive the life she was dealt with, all on her own, there had been no choice but to toughen the fork up and grit her teeth through every minute, only caring about her own well-being. She almost never cried, aside from that random break down in Bed, Bath and Beyond that had been brewing for a while. But there always seemed to be a new day to fight for. A new reason to keep on going.

But now, with the literal end of the line only moments away, she had never felt weaker.

Michael hadn’t said a word as he walked her back to her house, the polar opposite of the friendly, chatty dude who had guided her there all those months ago. He couldn’t even look at her.

It’s not until the sharp corners and colors of her house come into view that he speaks.

“Say your goodbyes. Feel free to take some keepsakes, if you want, but I would advise against packing any necessities. I believe they…provide everything you will need down there.” He tells her, quiet and blunt; “Trust me, what clothes or toothbrush you have will be the least of your concerns.”

“Probably, given all the fire. Maybe a bottle of Evian?” She tries to jest, tries to remind her of the jokes they used to have together.

Remind him that she liked him. Didn’t he? Was none of that real?

“The water will just help conduct the electricity.” He shrugs, not even a hint of dry humor in his tone; “Try not to let it get to you, until you’re there. Because literally everything is going to get you.”

“Don’t try sugar coating it, will you, bud.”

“I’m just being honest. It’s the least that one of us can do after all of this, don’t you think?” He asks her, that wounded look in his eyes that he’s had ever since she stood up and opened her big mouth.

Is he taking this personally? That she lied just to fork with him rather than saving her skin?

Anyone would think he was the one about to be forced on a train to Hell.

Her mouth opens, ready to say exactly what she thinks of him and how little he understands any of this for someone who claims to love humans so much. She’s ready to tell him what a terrible Architect he is and that she hopes his entire neighborhood caves in on itself when the next sinkhole opens up to swallow him as he wished.

He turns his back on her.

“Michael!”

He pauses. Eleanor takes a breath, hand shaking at her side.

“…I’m sorry.”

Fork it. She is.

Because as much as this system sucks, as unfair as any of it is and as overly sensitive Michael is, she can’t hate him for any of it. If anything, she feels sorry for him, and that’s insane. She’s the one about to suffer for eternity. Why should she feel guilty for hurting him when he gave her no other choice?

Michael turns around and looks at her. The betrayed crease to his frown has softened. He moves in close, placing his hands on her shoulders. The same as he did when they stood here before.

When he called her ‘special’.

She gazes up into his eyes as his mouth twitches and there’s a shine of tears behind his glasses.

“Oh, Eleanor. I’m sorry too.”

She sighs, biting her lip. They’re both sorry. They’ve both apologised. Is it going to be okay now? Can she stay? Does he still want her? They’re friends, right? Ross and Phoebe? Or maybe that combo, the two who got on least in the gang, was more accurate than Eleanor thought?

She tries to project her deepest fears and wishes into him through her eyes. Help me, Michael. Save me. Please. Don’t let them take me. I’m scared.

He pats his hands on her shoulders and, for the first time, his touch leaves her cold.

“I would say good luck but…We both know it won’t be of much help.” He steps back with a defeated slump; “…I won’t be seeing you off. Frankly, it’s too difficult for me and I have too much work to do, a neighbourhood to fix.”

A neighbourhood she ruined, is what she knows he wants to say.

“Goodbye, Eleanor.” He turns. And with one last look at the white hair on the back of his head, Eleanor fights back a sudden wave of tears.

The kick of being abandoned only gets sharper each time.

*

“What have they done to you, Eleanor?”

If she had her tongue, she would give him an answer. She would reply that he knows exactly what they’ve to her because he said it himself. Everything. They were going to let everything get to her. And they did.

His hands are reaching out to her and she can only cower away from them. For the most part because every touch she’s been given in the past…however long she’s been here, has meant burning or shocks or twisting or…worse. Always worse. She also remembers, dimly, the last time those hands were laid on her. They had sent her off with a useless farewell pat. Those hands hadn’t come for her, they hadn’t pulled her off the train before it could depart, like her brain had kept imagining over and over until she accepted that she couldn’t will it into reality.

She had trusted those hands before when, usually, she barely trusted anyone. How could she afford to do it again?

It’s only at the mention of Chidi’s name, at the faint chance of seeing her friends again…she lets him take her.

Because, fork it, how much farther could she fall? What does she have to lose when that ash hole has already taken everything from her?

She accepts his touch, his holding her, keeping her close. She will hide her face in the collar of his jacket as it’s the only thing she has to shelter away from the perverted creature with his lustful eyes on her, wanting to devour her again as if he were a hungry tiger eying a weak and vulnerable lost lamb. She let’s Michael carry her out because what does she have to lose?

That doesn’t mean she trusts him. Not after last time.

*

The first few days are a blinding, waking dream that seems to last forever.

Her fragile grip on reality that was there when Michael carried her out and put her on the train seemed to shatter by the time she woke up on the first morning in her new cell. This strange, new place full of all the things she shouldn’t have. A window. Sunlight. Comfy bedding and pillows and clothes that aren’t revealing or made of tight leather around her stomach. The warmth and solace is all too much to handle and, to begin with, all she can do is fight to get away from it. She doesn’t want to get too attached. Can’t let herself be fooled into having to endure the pain of losing it all again.

It wasn’t too bad at night. The moonlight was pretty and gentle as it cast itself into the room. It had been so long since she’d been allowed to dream. This one was so quiet to start with, no sound of screaming or crying through the walls, just the lapping of the waves as the tide pulled inn. Someone had found her, after she rolled herself off the bed and tried to cocoon herself away. Someone hadn’t grabbed her or pinned her down or threw her against the wall. Someone’s hand laid on her arm and it was…nice.

Words had whispered to her, waking her from a much less pleasant dream that had threatened to invade this one. _I’m right here._

Those words. So familiar. Tinged with black as she recalled how they had inevitably lead to her fall.

Despite that, she had clung to the words without daring to touch the hand squeezing her shoulder. She was too afraid to find out if it was really there or not. Or, worse, if she pushed too far back and the hand decided to treat her how she’s supposed to be treated. Ripping her apart instead of holding her together.

When the sun finally rises, it should be a gorgeous picture to wake up to.

Instead, it fills Eleanor’s head with a painfully loud buzzing. She had longed to see the sun again, forgetting how forking bright it was. She wants the moon back. The silver orb and blinking stars were just enough, leaving her with enough shadow to balance out the light, to remind her of where she belonged. She tries to hide under the duvet again but it’s not enough.

It gets worse when he comes back. Because he’s not _Him_.

When he tries to tug the duvet away from her eyes, she barely resists, instead choosing to use her hands to cover her chest, eyes not daring to meet his. His soft touch last night had been a welcome part of the dream. But now she can see him, hear him, endure him forcing her to let the light in. The dream is starting to feel real and that’s far too cruel.

“Eleanor. Listen to me.” Even when Michael orders her, he sounds far too kind; “I know you’re scared and you’ve been through a lot, to put it very mildly. But it’s over now.”

She starts to whimper at that, her body shaking terribly as it curls up as small as possible on the floor.

It will never be over. It will never be forking over.

Any moment now, she’s going to wake up and be in her cell. Trevor will enter and demand the same routine as he always does. He will tease her as she greets him, humiliates herself and lets him play with her as much as he wants until he bores and hurts her before leaving her to suffer the pain until he decides to return and ‘fix her up’. This new torture, giving her a dream of rescue and safety before snatching it away, is genius really. It will only really work if she believes it. She’s a stupid bench but not that stupid.

Michael’s hand ghosts over her own clutching her shoulder.

“You didn’t want to go back to town, to your friends, remember?” He tells her, now down on his knees next to her; “That’s okay. I wouldn’t force you into anything you don’t want. So…I’m gonna take care of you. We’re miles away from the town, no one can find us here except Janet when we need her. You’re perfectly safe now. It’s just me and you. We’ll be here as long as you want.”

She would laugh if she could remember how to. It’s even more ridiculous when he says it out loud. Michael is going to be the one to take care of her? Mr. “You Don’t Belong Here” is not only going to do a one eighty and rescue her but is also going to stay with her, away from his passion project, and try to help her become something other than a broken mess of a human?

The dream was simple and peaceful to start, now it’s getting downright crazy.

The disbelieving laughter just comes out as more crying, tears of hysteria spilling down her cheeks. Michael’s hand still seems to hover over her. Is he already regretting this decision?

“C’mon. I did my best to design a nice bed for you here. Wouldn’t you rather sleep in it?”

He tries to touch her again, firmer this time, hands sliding around her and trying to pick her up as they had in her first cell. Eleanor freaks, writhing and pushing against them, attempting to wriggle away. She had accepted him taking her last time, dared to reach for him, out of a moment of madness. She knows better now. She wouldn’t make such a stupid mistake! She knows she’s going to pay dearly for that!

Michael is more persistent than she would have given him credit for. Not to mention strong. His long arms bind her tighter the more she flails and kicks out, wailing wordlessly, wishing she had the ability to verbalise her plea.

_Please! Just leave me the fork alone! You’re making it worse!_

He almost drops her, unceremoniously, on the divan, not touching her again until she tries to crawl off the bed and he has to hold her down, persistent hands placed on her shoulders, staying there patiently until she uses up what little energy she had regained in the short reprieve she’d had from her old cell. She wants to carry on screaming and crying and fighting against the idea of hope before a wave of exhaustion crashes into her.

Michael’s hand smooths over her hair as her body starts to go limp, eyelids growing heavy. She’s known what it is to feel tired for so long now, she’d forgotten how it feels for her body to be able to fall asleep.

“There we go. Rest now.” His whispers fade along with his face above her; “I know you’ve got plenty of sleep to catch up on. Close your eyes, Eleanor.”

She feels helpless but to obey. The reward is another tender brush of his fingers on her head.

“That’s it. You’re in safe hands now. I won’t let you go again.”

There’s an edge to Michael’s words at that last part. It draws so close to the line between tender protectiveness and…something else. Something darker which must have been affected by the nightmares that come all too soon.

Nightmares where she’s being locked in a bird cage, Michael turning the key to seal her in.

The cage is beautiful, lined with sapphires with warm sand as bedding. There’s shrimp in her feeder which she’s too mentally scarred to eat. After Michael’s sealed her in, he vanishes, leaving a far more cruel and twisted demon standing in his place to sneer at her. The cage is small and lonely but she clings to the bars when his hands reach through to grab her. She was his songbird first, after all. The one whose tongue he sliced out when she refused to sing for him.

She’s on the floor again within a few hours, thrashing and bawling, Michael coming in again and trying to wrestle her back onto the bed. Part of her old sneaky self that remains buried deep, deep down is curious how long he will keep this up, when it starts to get into a routine of trying to put a squealing Eleanor to bed only for her to refuse to stay put.

It’s on the fifth attempt, she thinks, when she thinks she starts to hear a bite of frustration in the angel’s usually calm and tolerant tone.

“Will you…just…stop it? For one moment, just… _stop fighting_ , Eleanor, _please_!” He pins her wrists down; “I promise you, you’re safe here! No one’s gonna hurt you! You can relax! Just let me help-.”

Her foot collides with his chin and he lets go.

It finally causes her to obey. To be still.

Oh no. Oh god, no! What has she done?! Eleanor sits up, staring in horror as Michael steps back from her for a moment, just to give his jaw a rub. Is there are…flash of anger in his eyes? Did she see that or is it something she’s just all too used to witnessing from her previous immortal keeper? When he blinks and turns to look at her again, there’s no anger. There’s barely even frustration.

Just…resignation? Tired as fork?

He moves his hand away and meets her look as she huddles against the headboard. Oh crab, she went too far. She should know better than to struggle. She knows what’s coming when she gets in a good punch or a kick, even if it barely hurts him, it’s the principle of it. Whores don’t get to fight back. Whores accept their forking place.

Whores lie down and…

Eleanor moves on all fours towards Michael. She wonders if it’s worth getting onto the floor, to be at his feet, at her proper place. Or she’s at a good enough angle now, the guy being as tall as he is, for her to get a good reach for the flies of his jeans. Her eyes glass over as she lets her fretful, confused mind surrender to the automatic functions of her conditioned body. Do what she’s made for. Serve. Please. Be a good forking hole.

Michael’s hands snap shut around her wrists before she can pinch at his zipper.

“Eleanor.” Him saying her name makes her freeze again; “...Lay down.”

Her chest heaves at his tone. He’s not playing around anymore. He will take her as he wants, not how Trevor has designed her to act.

A whimper leaves her lips as she moves back and lays down, head back against the pillow.

She stares up at the ceiling. Is he going to just climb on her? Would he prefer that she just stays still or is he like Trevor in that he enjoys the struggle as she’s rutted into the ground because there are no mattresses in the Bad Place?

“Close your eyes.”

Just so. Very different from Trevor. He always loves to watch the tears fall as he impales her.

Something starts to cover her and it takes a moment for her to realise it’s not Michael’s weight on top of her. It’s the duvet again, pulled over and tucked below her chin.

“Now stay there. Get as much as sleep as you need.” By the low vibe of his voice, she knows he’s not forking around anymore.

She dreads to think what the consequences will be if she disobeys again.

“Goodnight, Eleanor.” His words leave her along with his presence on the bed, followed soon after by the sound of the door creaking. Not quite shutting. That’s also wrong.

The door is meant to be slammed and then locked and bolted and then double bolted.

Not that it matters. She’s dared to escape through ajar doors before she vividly remembers the results. Never again. She’ll obey Michael. She’ll be good.

_“Oh, Eleanor. I’m sorry too.”_

She lays still beneath the duvet, crying far too hard to fall asleep again just yet. She’s spent her entire first day of ‘freedom’ screaming and napping. The longer she lays there, alone, somehow cold despite all the fabric tucked around her, she acknowledges the loneliness creeping beneath her skin. Was that why she had been screaming so often? To keep bringing Michael back?

Or was it to wake up and end this new torture? She doesn’t know what her twisted up brain thinks it’s doing right now.

The moon soon returns at her window and she curls on her side to watch it.

The sweet and soft light comforts her again. She’ll do as Michael says now. Stay put. Be quiet. Sleep, even if it’s only pretend. Make the dream last as long as possible. It might be the last one she ever has.

If she can show him how well she obeys, will she get to feel the nice hand on her arm again?

*

She sits still, in front of her makeup table, as Michael finishes doing the buttons on the back of her dress. He then picks up her brush and finishes tidying up her hair, fingers gliding carefully through to tie back the top layer. He’s super quick at it now after the practice he’s had.

“You sure you don’t want me to try braiding it? That’s what roomies do, right?” He asks her.

 _Girlfriend roomies. Not mute trash-bags and their angelic carers._ She wishes she could say, rather than just give him a tiny smile reflected in the mirror.

She shakes her head. Maybe another day if he’s really so keen to give it a go. Michael is always so excited to try out new ‘human’ hobbies and skills he’s been learning, usually while she’s passed out on the sofa or sunbathing. His enthusiasm for the little basic life skills he’s picking up that are so new to him are one of the few joys of Eleanor’s newfound existence.

That sounded so ungrateful in her head. She’s in freakin’ Heaven, after all. She knows what real Hell is like now and merely being saved from that alone should be paradise. And here, she’s safe. She has her own private villa on a beach all to themselves. She has a celestial being waiting on her, hand and foot, protecting her, feeding her and helping her regain what autonomy and dignity was stolen from her. And yet, it’s all weighed down and tainted by the raw memories of where she’s been dragged from to get here. The constant night terrors continue to plague her, even with Michael keeping close to her at night, shooing them away with his comforting arms far quicker than if he wasn’t there. The infinite pleasures of the Good Place can hardly be experienced when she still can’t speak well enough to summon Janet to fulfil her desires. And Michael, as much as he knows her, can only assume so much what she would like.

Then there’s what progress she’s made to becoming an actual functioning person again taking one step forward and then three drunken stumbles back. That’s how it feels today.

She should be able to dress herself and do her own hair. She’s been able to for a couple of weeks now. But when she awoke this morning, every joint in her body felt rusted up, aching awfully when she sat up. She didn’t dare try to test her recovering legs, not when she still hadn’t mastered walking without the ocean giving her a boost to start. Just trying to remove her pyjamas had made her gasp in pain, leading her to shamefully having to gesture a request to Michael to help get her dressed. Again.

“It’s all right. That’s what I’m here for, Eleanor. Making humans happy is the whole reason I wanted to be the first Architect to live among you all.” He had told her when he saw the upset on her face after having to ask for help again; “Just think of it as our roles have swapped. Now I’m your assistant and you can order me around as you please. Okay, Boss?”

That was still an odd concept to get into her head, that the guy who she’d first mistaken for a surprisingly hot god-like figure when she first met him was now acting as her butler. Especially when she had only just escaped the mindset that Michael was her new immortal ‘owner’.

His hands finish smoothing out her hair and sliding the clip she passes him into the front to match her dress.

He smiles at her in the mirror and rests his palms on her shoulders.

“All done?”

She nods, satisfied enough with her reflection. It’s as neat and cleaned up as she’s looked for a while after weeks of first staying in pyjamas, then mostly in her bikini, using Michael’s shirt as a top and the odd lazy t-shirt and leggings. She had contemplated putting some make up on…before her brain flashed back to a memory of Trevor drawing a blood-red stick of lipstick across her broken mouth.

She’ll settle for a plain, kinda washed out face. She’ll settle for basic.

Michael’s fingers give her shoulders a squeeze.

“You look beautiful.”

Her eyes glance up.

“I mean, for a human.” He quips, stepping back; “You’re all kinda weird, hairless monkeys in the eyes of us immortals.”

Eleanor can dare to swivel on her chair and give him a look at that, biting her lip as if wanting to chastise him. He must know he’s doing the whole ‘arrogant immortal’ thing he again he sometimes does.

“Hey, as weird, hairless monkeys go…You’re by far the prettiest I’ve come across in the last million years.” His knuckles caress the side of her head.

She spots them again. His eyes, lingering on her, soft and adoring. Those eyes have appeared a few times now, especially since that first day he helped her walk out of the water and she gave him a kiss to say thank you. Sometimes, when they’re laying in bed together, she’ll catch him looking at her with those same blue gems when she opens her own, before he tries to look away as if he hasn’t been staring at her for who knows how long.

It’s those eyes, along with his tender touch, that she would be more than happy to lose herself in, the sole sources of comfort she’s had in so long. But there’s also a twinge of anxiety in the back of her neck which she’s afraid to confront. Michael is all she has here. She’ll do anything to avoid being afraid of him as she now is of the rest of the world.

Michael blushes and pulls his hand back, “Okay then. Shall we go?”

He offers her his open arms and she nods, letting him scoop her up again.

Earlier that morning, he’d immediately asked if she wanted a rain check, given how badly her joints were hurting and struggling to move. Thankfully, Eleanor had regained some semblance of her stubbornness in the past week, and she refused to let this little set back spoil her plans and force her to settle for another day in front of the sofa binging Netflix again. Her and Michael had made plans and she wasn’t letting Trevor spoil them, even if this one wasn’t technically on him. He was still to blame at the root of it all.

“Janet did warn me this could happen.” Michael had explained to her when she awoke to her aching bones; “First time walking again after months of laying down and sleeping twenty-three hours a day is gonna do a number on you.”

Eleanor had glared at him.

“I apologise. Twenty-two hours and fifteen minutes. Rounding down.” He teased and she let it go with a roll of her eyes, gladly swallowing the pill he gave her that took the pain away, though her body still needed time to rest before more exercise.

Ten minutes later, Michael is carrying her up a short walk in the opposite direction of the beach, past the train station and up a rising path to a small park that overlooks the shore and the nearby woods. As much as she loves their beach, she had been looking forward to a change of scenery. She knows it sounds corny, but she had missed seeing so much of the color green, as well as all the various flowers which she won’t even attempt to name other than ‘red ones and purple ones’. This park had been here in the original design of her childhood getaway, back on Earth, only that one had a lot more litter and ducks in the pond instead of swans doing what looked to be some kind of synchronized gliding routine.

She never thought she’d love feeling the grass so much, sliding her fingers through the soft blades and the cool dirt while the rest of her sits on the picnic blanket Michael laid out while her companion opens the picnic basket. She smiles at the ants who line up onto the fabric and gladly carry her plate of sandwiches to her, along with a small glass of champagne.

“Thanks fellas. We’ll take it from here.” Michael rewards them with some scattered crumbs.

After she’s devoured more sandwiches than should probably have been able to fit in that little wicker carrier, she picks at the grapes and berries between sipping her glass. She pauses between the fifth and sixth grape, needing to take a deep breath, eyes watering a little as she looks out at the twirling swans. This really does feel like Heaven. There had been a moment there she had almost forgot, for a wonderful second, what horrors she had been through.

Eleanor lays back on the blanket, looking at the sun blinking through the leaves above, relishing the brush of the grass against her elbow. She moves her other hand over to touch Michael’s wrist, distracting him from the cupcake he looks ready to inhale in one bite.

She smiles and summons a breath, stretching her jaw; “…Yum!”

Michael beams, putting the cake down; “Oh, you’re welcome. I had to find a Subway training video but I think I managed to outdo those guys.”

His eyes cast over the rest of her body with concern.

“How’s the aches and pains? That analgesic should last all day but let me know if you want something stronger.” Michael asks her, “Obviously, drugs aren’t really ‘encouraged’ in the Good Place, but there are certain…substitutes and I think you’re as deserving as ever of a proper, safe high.”

She honestly wouldn’t say no to a powerful mushroom that only gives her some pleasant hallucinations and to distract her. She gives a small wince when she tries to bend her knee.

“Ow.” Is all she can really mutter to describe the sensation. It’s not as bad as it was this morning but it would be better if it would go the fork away and she could carry on making the progress she was.

Michael looks at her leg, thoughtfully, for a moment, before shuffling closer.

“Do you mind if I…?” He hovers his hand close below the hem of her dress.

Is he going to cast some sort of magic spell on her? She often does wonder why he doesn’t do something like that to get her instantly back to normal. Maybe she’s too forked up even for Heaven to find a quick fix for. Eleanor appreciates his hesitation, even after all this time he’s spent caring intimately for her, he always respects her boundaries. She nods, curious.

He cracks his knuckles and then starts to press his fingers against the muscles either side of her leg, gently applying pressure right where everything felt far too stiff. There’s an odd jolt at first that causes her to wince, automatically, before her brain recognises that it’s not painful. Something has become dislodged and it sends a pulse of relief throughout her leg, all the way up to her brain. Eleanor smiles and lets out a heavy sigh.

“That feel nice?” Her masseur sounds as if he already knows the answer.

With a nod, she encourages him to continue.

“H-how?” She manages to ask, amazed as his fingers automatically find the next sore spot. She remembers before he answers; “Oh…S-see…ten-shon?”

It must work the same way as it did when he cleared the space for her to sit in his office.

The smile on his face tells her that he’s impressed she remembers. Michael nods.

“Just relax. Sometimes, believe it or not, I do know what I’m doing.” He says, wryly, and for a moment it’s difficult to connect him to the bumbling, stressed-out middle manager she witnessed sweating in distress most days back in town.

He manages to release another tough knot in her calf and Eleanor rests her head back, arms out either side, the relief tingling throughout her body. Yep, the guy definitely knows his stuff. It’s difficult for her to keep her volume down when his next touch further up causes her to moan, softly, her head rolling back.

Her muscles soften while her blood rushes, quickening her heartbeat, as she feels all the hot energy released begin to pool around her…

Oh, fork.

Michael rubs his fingertips hard against her thigh, above her knee joint, so close to the hem of her dress. When she whimpers, she’s unsure if it’s from fear, or from the buzz of euphoria swelling between her legs. Blades of grass crush between her fingers as she clenches at the ground.

It’s too close. Oh, god, don’t panic, Eleanor!

_He called you beautiful. He wouldn’t say that unless he wanted something._

Another whimper leaves her.

_Here the two of you are, all alone, and you’re utterly helpless. He can do what he wants. He knows what you’re good for._

_What a lucky whore you are._

Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!

“Eleanor…”

She opens her eyes. Michael’s hands are in the air, either side of his head, brow creased with concern as he looks down at her quivering on the blanket. Her legs are pulled up, as if ready to cower and shrink away from him.

Sitting up, Eleanor tries to tug her dress further down towards her knee. She feels the heat travel up to her cheeks as she blushes. How forking embarrassing.

“I’ll stop if you want. I’m sorry if I made you think…” He sounds nervous, as if he’s the one who crossed a line; “I…haven’t done that to a human before. I mean, obviously, we’re trained to know how to spot and relieve pain on you guys in orientation but…I’m very out of practice. I didn’t intend to make you feel anything…uncomfortable?”

She almost laughs. That was the farthest from discomfort she’s felt in a long while.

Eleanor forces her tongue to work, desperate to explain herself; “…N-Nice…Not…bad. J-just….” Her hand ghosts over her lap; “….’Member... _him_.”

“Ah.”

Michael gets it. There’s a flash of anger across his face but Eleanor is almost certain it’s not directed at her. The very mention of her abuser, her demonic captor, usually causes Michael to wince in upset or barely contained rage. She wonders what it would be like to see an angel turn feral and beat the shirt out of someone? Her guardian is usually so sweet and soft, it’s tough to imagine him hurting anyone. But when Eleanor gets a glimpse of those eyes, of that set jaw, she can’t help but remember the ferocity of his tone when he had told Trevor to get the fork out of his way before he carried her to freedom.

It was thoughts like that which, when she had too much time to let her mind drift off, caused that want to rise in her as it just, conflicting with the poison of her conditioning.

“Listen…Eleanor.” Michael shuffles closer to her; “I want you to know, you don’t have to ever worry about… _that_ with me. I don’t have the ability to see humans as sexually attractive. It’s like I said before, immortals are so advanced, we don’t really see you as being on our level. You’re like…”

“Mon’eys?” She stammers. Dude really is oblivious to how a little insulting that is.

“Exactly! That’s what it would be like for us! Well…for those of us in the Good Place.” He tries to explain; “Those who work in the Bad Place, demons like…him…well, they also see that but they’ve been trained to use sex as another way to torture. But you’re not in the Bad Place anymore. And I’m not him. And…even if I did feel attracted to you, I would sooner be retired before ever doing anything like that to you…I swear.”

Eleanor believes him. Fork, it was never a question of trusting Michael, not really. No one has touched her so intimately, so constant, in decades, not for this long. He’s helped her get dressed, guided her in and out of the bath, washed her and fed her and held her. Always so firm but delicate. Safe as houses. She’s sat naked before him more than enough times and never felt the slightest bit threatened by any wanting looks or lecherous vibes he gave off.

And now he’s made it clear as crystal, he doesn’t have the hots for her, doesn’t even see her as a creature on his level that he could connect with in that way.

Why so disappointed, Shellstrop?

“N-not…beau’ful?” She dares to ask with a twitching, coy smile.

Michael bites his lip, as if caught out; “I…I did mean that, of course. But, like, as in those swans over there are beautiful…Or they would be if they weren’t having an argument in the mud. But they are incredible to watch and admire, right? It doesn’t mean you would want to take one to bed with you. At least I really hope not, Eleanor.”

She manages to laugh at that and raise her palms up. Fine! He’s made his point. She’s basically teasing him now. Also, no, not even she is every horny enough for a swan.

A swan with Tahani’s head, maybe- No, damn it, Eleanor!

“Would you like me to carry on?” He asks her.

It’s probably a bad idea. She’s frightened at the thought of Trevor popping back into her mind to trash talk her and make her feel like a dirty slut who should be ashamed of herself rather than proud to explore her sexuality as she pleases, like she used to. She’s worried about embarrassing herself in front of Michael again.

But he said himself; he doesn’t give a fork. It doesn’t work like that for him. On his part, it’s completely innocent. It’s down to her to remember that and keep her mind clean five minutes.

Eleanor nods and rests back with her head in the grass.

She hears Michael’s knuckles crack before he gets to work again, this time on her other leg. He begins to apply a pressure around her ankles, fingers moving in a rhythm, and she lets out a breath of pleasure, eyes blinking up at the trees again. A butterfly with sapphire wings flutters over her head as another wave of relief threatens to drown her in sheer bliss. She doesn’t even dare to think what other neat, little tricks he could to her body with those magic fingers. At least, she tries not to. Honestly, she makes some effort.

When it feels as though he’s shooed away every little ache in her legs, Michael parks his ash beside her head. Eleanor steadies her breathing, revelling in what is definitely the best massage she’s had since she stole her friend’s sauna voucher, before pushing herself to sit up.

“…D-damn.” She manages with a silly grin spread over her face.

“You’re welcome.” He says, “Oh wait. I almost forgot to do your feet!”

What?! No, not there!

She’s unable to verbalise any protest. When Michael reaches for her toes, she makes a weak attempt to try to block him, before his fingers are suddenly poking between the digits and on the soles of her feet, making her yelp and laugh uncontrollably. Oh, shirt, the son of a bench knew full well what he was doing!

Michael is merciful. Too long would be torture, after all, which isn’t his deal. He giggles along with her, tickling just enough to give her a fun fright, before pulling back.

“Ah, my bad. You can fire me as your servant now, if you’d like.” He tells her.

Eleanor shakes her head, regaining her composure once she’s tucked her feet safely away from Michael’s treacherous reach.

She pokes a finger against the rolled-up sleeve of his shirt.

“N-not…serve-ant.” Eleanor corrects with a smile; “…A-angel buddy.”

Her friend. For the while, for who knows how long, the best and only friend she has.

A strange look sweeps across Michael’s face, his eyelids blinking rapidly, ears pinking a little. One would think he’s never been anyone’s buddy before. Has he? Did Janet count?

“We’re not actually supposed to be called ‘angels’, just so you kno-.” He tries, a little sheepish.

Eleanor ignores him as she shuffles closer, curling her smaller arms around one of his in a tight hug and resting her head against his shoulder.

“ _Angel buddy_.” She asserts, as clear as any words she’s managed to speak recently. She won’t settle for anything less.

Michael releases a sigh of defeat against her ear; “Whatever you say…Sleepy Head.”

She can hardly protest against that, not when she’d be more than ready to fall asleep against her lovely Michael-shaped pillow right here. It’s so…tranquil. The swans have patched things up and are back to gliding sweetly together across the surface of the pond. There’s birds singing above her and the ants are doing a welcome, silent job of clearing up the spills from their picnic. It all seems far too beautiful to waste, even if they are in no rush to go back to the house, let alone go back to the neighbourhood and to the stress and anxieties of their regular afterlives. It’s supposed to be Heaven after all, even if neither of them technically counted as a resident. Just an intruder and her human-obsessed rogue Architect.

Didn’t one of them deserve just the smallest taste of paradise?

When it becomes clear that Eleanor doesn’t intend to nap, Michael summons a tv screen to appear in the air, as well as pulling out some pillows and a box of popcorn from the bottomless basket.

“You did say you wanted to show me how much work these Real Housewives don’t get done.” He reminds her. It’s true.

She snuggles in close, throwing an arm across his belly, fingers stroking though the fabric of his shirt. Maybe having a completely chaste angel bestie who could give her something akin to an orgasm with the innocent touch of his fingers in the right spot was just as good as any lover she could have. Not that it wouldn’t be a nice bonus but…this is more than she once could have ever hoped for. This could never be soured or become something sordid and dangerous. What she’s become used to expecting when it comes to anything sexual, thanks to Trevor.

Michael’s fingers stroke down her arm as he holds her throughout the programme. Could she be sneaky and complain that her arms are just as sore and in need of tending to?

It might be that she’s pushed her luck enough for one day that holds her back from asking. They binge-watch half a season and Eleanor throws the last of their bread towards the swans after they’ve finished their show (tomorrow the act is a frog who does stand-up). It’s clear that Michael is starting to get into it by his constant gasps and disapproving clicks at the same time that Eleanor’s eyelids grow heavy.

There’s a gap in her memory as she falls asleep at some point before Michael made the tv disappear and packed their stuff up, and after the moment Eleanor wakes to find herself being carried down the hill, back towards home. She blearily watches the orange-tinted scenery pass, yawning as she keeps a hold around Michael’s neck. Does he never get tired of lugging her around like this? Does she weigh about the same as a pillow to him? How strong is he, really?

A second, longer gap, occurs not too long after Eleanor’s imagination start to enjoy itself again.

The next time, she wakes in her bedroom, already settled on the mattress, her dress replaced for pyjamas. Michael is moving to lay down beside her when her eyes open. He somehow manages to look both happy and apologetic that he may have done something to wake her.

“You’ve been out for a couple hours.” He tells her, “I thought you’d sleep through the whole night.”

Fingers crossed, she will do. It’s been such a lovely day, she’d rather not have any night terrors spoil it.

Eleanor gives him a smile. Michael returns it, opening his arms, beckoning her to enter them as she does every night now. She can’t possibly think of anywhere safer to sleep than those arms. She shuffles against his chest, letting them fold around her, one set of fingers stroking through her hair as she rests her cheek against Michael’s warm chest. She doesn’t think she’s ever felt him be cold.

Perhaps angels are made of fire. That would be pretty awesome.

She gives it a couple of minutes, her breathing slowing down, expecting her mind to fall again. When it becomes obvious that her body doesn’t want to go back to sleep just yet, she asks a question that’s been plaguing her almost every hour for the past few months.

“Mmm-Micha’…Micha-el…” She whispers.

He hums in response.

“…W-why me?”

His fingers still their motions against her hair. The full context of her question must be obvious.

Why save _her_?

He owes her nothing. She was never supposed to be in his neighborhood and her very presence nearly caused a complete collapse as well as the death of his not-a-robot assistant. She lied to him from the start. She ruined his dream job. He’d sent her off before with little more than a regretful goodbye and now, here he was, spending almost every moment caring for her needs, making her feel as though she truly belongs in the Good Place, when they know that’s not true.

“Because…” He pauses, keeping her close in his arms; “I guess, because, I told you that we were friends. I asked for you to help me and, whether you were being truthful or not, you made a promise to be there for me, whatever I needed. You promised to be right there, for me…I should have done the same for you and I didn’t. I wasn’t there when you needed me to save you. I was a…bad friend.”

He says the words as if there is no greater crime in the universe.

“I don’t care about points or what some dumb accountant thinks you deserve. I read your file. I’ve spent time with you, I’ve watched you improve yourself with Chidi’s help…You’re not a bad person, Eleanor. You never were. You just got dealt a bad hand. I know what that’s like.”

Even Heaven seems to poorly treat its employees on occasions, Eleanor thinks, or at least give them poor support. Or the threat of something as awful as ‘Retirement’. The Good Place seemed kinda forked up if you weren’t part of the one in a billion humans who escaped eternal torment.

“Maybe Chidi is right and there is a chance that you being able to get better means you deserve to be here.” He explains, his thumb circling a spot above her elbow; “…Or maybe I’m just selfish and simply want you to stay. It’s my neighborhood, after all. I get to say what is part of it and…I say that you’re a part of it. One of the most important parts, in fact, at least to me.”

And what the Architect says goes. Eleanor doesn’t see any reason to answer with that, nor is she keen to. Her heart is already swelling with the affirmation that Michael wants her here, not for any practical reason or to serve some higher purpose…just because he likes her? She somehow managed to get a freakin’ angel to adore her enough to defy the laws of eternal justice. It is a rather effective ego boost.

She exhales against Michael’s chest, sated by that answer, hugging him closer as her eyes start to droop again.

“…I’m sorry I ever thought otherwise. I’m sorry I let you go. There isn’t a second goes by I don’t regret-.”

“I fo’give you.” She whispers.

The immortal being tenses in her arms.

“You do?”

She nods. How can she possibly stay mad at him after all he’s done for her? After he saved her? Fine, he screwed up, but he’s trying to be better and to make it right with her. It was doing that which convinced Chidi to give her a second chance. Eleanor knows to follow his example. It seems even angels can screw up from time to time.

*

No ability to see humans as attractive, huh?

It should have been the first big red warning sign, looking back on it. Everything that he’d been feeding her since the moment she lay eyes on him – no, scratch that, when she opened her eyes to the words on the wall of his waiting room – had been nothing but big, fat, stinking lies.

_You’re in the Good Place._

_You’re okay, Eleanor._

_I’m taking you home._

_You’re safe now._

They were all enough to create a world of deception on their own, make her fall for this twisted little real life Truman Show. With an old charm smile and a twinkle in his eye, Michael could easily convince her that he was some second rate St. Peter welcoming her into paradise, that he was on the side of the good and righteous. He could make her believe that he was her friend and he cared. It would have all been enough and she probably would have been able to laugh off the sickening feeling of betrayal when the curtain lifted.

But there was one lie that took it too far.

_I love you._

Not simply as a friend, though that would have been cruel enough. Not as part of his fascination with a lower species that would be too gross to have intimate relations with. Real forking love. Love that came from him confessing that he had been attracted to her for months but had needed the time to work it out all, never having experienced those feelings before. Love that meant truly enjoying spending every waking moment with her, sharing so many wild experiences and deep conversations, being as close to her as her own soul. Love that was strong enough for Eleanor to believe it. To feel loved, truly loved, and to know she was capable of loving someone else in return.

That had been the ultimate lie. The lie that made her blood boil and the world become tinged with a shade of red.

He had spent weeks ‘fixing her up’, being so sweet and gentle, taking care of her every need with the most chaste attention. He’d pushed back against every attempt she had made to act on her sexualised conditioning. He’d sat with her beneath those trees, in front of that pond, and told her that she had nothing to worry about because he didn’t look upon her ‘like that’. Even when she’d tried to kiss him, he’d been the grown up, he’d stopped her from acting on her drunken impulses with something she would have regretted. And then, for months, they’d been close as two innocent best friends could be, only with the odd playful flirting and moment of romantic tension. It hadn’t lasted.

Only several months after he’d told her he wasn’t attracted to her, Michael was then screwing her against that very same tree, the swans having been snapped away to give them some privacy. He’d laid with her on the grass, the moonlight shining through the canape, his arm draped over her naked waist while she curled into him. She’d hummed and smiled as those fingers had travelled down her back and between her thighs, finding new zones to tweak and rub to make her moan again, only this time with neither of them holding back from the limits of her pleasure.

His lips had travelled over her chest, his hand cupping beneath her breast before sliding over her stomach, sending little vibrations through every raw nerve in her body.

The dude had played the long game. Eleanor had to admire that.

But he got what he wanted in the end.

_Those who work in the Bad Place, demons like…him…well, they also see that but they’ve been trained to use sex as another way to torture._

Michael had been the one to tell her that. He’d also followed it up with the reassurance that she wasn’t in the Bad Place and that he wasn’t anything like ‘him’.

A lie peppered with truth was always easier to believe. Now she knew what he was.

He hadn’t been like Trevor, no. His method of using sex as torture had been far, far more devious.

And had it not been for those damn tapes, Eleanor probably would have never discovered the truth. How could anything this sick and cruel be reality? Only in Hell.

There have been a lot of men in her life who she’s dumped before. They’ve either left her dissatisfied or bored or faded from her memory before she’s even officially called it off with them.

This is the first time that she’s ever broken up with someone in anger.

No. Hatred.

It would be enough to mess with Michael’s head. To let him know how it feels to have everything you are so convinced is clear in front of your eyes turn out to be one big show of smoke and mirrors. To have your heartstrings controlled by a puppeteer. It’s all too satisfying to watch him scream and break down when the vision of her is stolen by fake Trevor on the train.

The kicker comes when she reveals herself. It comes when he sees her as the greatest show-woman, at least for tonight. When that fear strikes across his eyes and he recoils in shock and…

Wait, that’s not right.

There’s tears in his eyes. That’s not what she wanted, damn it. She wanted him to reveal the monster he was. The demon she heard mocking her and her friends on that tape. She wanted him to sprout his horns and a goatee. There isn’t supposed to be tears. He’s not supposed to look broken or hurt by a dumb, hairless monkey. He really is going all on out his little charade here.

“Sweet girl, I am so…so sorry…”

It’s those fingers brushing against her cheek.

Her mind flashes back to a year ago, at least from his perspective. She remembers asking him, forking begging him with her eyes, to save her. She’d been convinced that she’d been the one to fail him. That she had been cruel enough to lie and hurt someone as wholesome and kind-hearted as a real angel. Her friend.

The palm now cradling her face had brushed against her shoulder. It had given her the faintest second of hope that he would change his mind.

And then he had let her go.

Now she gets to look back on that memory with fresh eyes. Now she sees him laughing at her terror behind the mask. She sees every moment they shared together as nothing but make pretend. The sick, forking, shirt-faced blaster.

 _Oh,_ _Eleanor. I’m sorry too._

He hadn’t been sorry then. He wasn’t sorry now.

But he was about to be, she thinks with a sinister grin, before she plunges the knife into him.

*

“Does it still hurt?” Her finger traces over the scar on his belly.

Michael watches her, having pulled his shirt up a little to expose the long, red groove that remained, even after Janet repaired his suit after the showdown on the beach.

“A little. It stings from time to time.” He tells her, fingers combing through her hair as they lay on the picnic blanket, back beneath the tree in the little park on the overlook.

The ants are back to cleaning up the last drops of crumbs from the bucket of popcorn shrimp. The swans drifting on the pond probably spend more time watching the two of them rather than being appreciated as the main spectacle.

Eleanor looks up at him; “Good. It will remind you never to fork with me again.”

Her hand leaves his stomach and travels up to caress his cheek, her lips moving in to brush against his, the affection almost incongruous after the minor threat. Michael hums after kissing her, keeping her close to his side with his arm around her back.

“That’s why Janet left it there for me. Not that I need it. Does it happen to make me any sexier?”

“Nah, it’s only facial scars that do that for me.” She tells him, coyly; “You did kinda annoy me the other day with that whole farm day torture, how about I get you back by stabbing your face a little? That might boost your hotness rating.”

“I tried to warn you and Chidi about the angry pigs but you wouldn’t listen.”

He takes hold of her shoulders and slides behind her.

“I do know of one way I can make it up to you.” Michael leans in close to whisper, lips brushing against her earlobe.

“What are you…Oh! Oh, fork yeah. That’ll do it.” She gasps as he starts massaging her shoulders.

He doesn’t need to look at her back to know where all those sensitive spots are, he’s studied her body almost as much as her file, not to mention he can follow his other senses as they lad him to where the tension is most loud or feels the most heavy against his fingers. It’s the least he can do after all the fake torture she and her friends have to endure in between the brief moments of living in fake Heaven. It’s the least he can do after all the lies and betrayals.

Fork it, he would give her anything she desired. This beautiful human has changed his entire view of the Universe. This beautiful human has saved him in more ways than he can count.

Michael kisses her hair as she leans back against him, communicating his promise to her with every push and circle of his fingertips that he will never let her down again, that he will never let any harm come to her or their friends, in all of eternity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The moment of Eleanor cuddling Michael's arm beneath the tree was inspired by this on-set pic of Ted and Kristen during filming the final episode: https://64.media.tumblr.com/3edb74576c2a71b4d25eb388befce4f4/5672a3395b0e19dc-b0/s640x960/7a827783ea4c94d66d99466431ea91ba1a11de3e.png


	7. Haunted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nightmares continue to plague both Eleanor and Michael, but can they find each other?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short(ish) chapter for Cecret who gave me this idea. It was intended to be a drabble to ease myself in but ended up making it a little longer. TW: some zombie-ish gore at the start, 'cause Halloween is near, but the rest is fluff.

It was impossible. Janet had confirmed it for her, over a dozen times by now, that it was impossible.

There was no way he could ever come back. That was the purpose of Retirement for an Immortal. It was the Final End. Unless the eternal, all-powerful Judge of the Universe wished to snap her fingers to reconstruct someone who had received such a sentence, they were toast. Literally, doomed to toast and sizzle for eternity on the surface of those countless suns.

And why would she ever want to bring back him of all creatures into the Universe? It made no sense, she knew that. She wasn’t stupid.

But there he is.

Standing there. At the foot of her bed.

A flash of lightning from outside her window illuminates his image for half a second, his eyes sparking with red-hot vengeance. His teeth bared like a ravenous wolf.

“Hey there, sugar lips. How you been?”

She can’t scream. Trust her, she’s trying. She’s frozen beneath her duvet, mouth clamped shut.

One mangled hand, bones revealed where the flesh has melted or crumbled away, tugs at her sheet, slowly removing the one pathetic shield she has to cover herself from him as he starts to move around.

Go away, she wants to hiss. You’re not real. You can’t be here.

The closer she gets, the more she sees. His entire skin suit looks as if it’s been burned to a crisp and then carelessly mushed back onto his frame like cooked putty. His malicious eyes are larger than usual, almost poking out from where the lids are long dissolved. Half his lips are gone, giving him a permanent grin, while he has just enough to complete the other half on his own, excusing the gaping hole in his cheek.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t find my way back to you?” His grotesque hand slides under her pyjama top, skeletal fingers hooking beneath her breast; “A few billion lightyears is nothing to a demon, baby doll. It’s just a trip down the cosmic highway. I pieced myself back together, drop by drop, stitched my suit back together…all so I could get back to my girl.”

Her chest thrums with terror, lips parting as the smallest of whimpers escapes her. Her bedroom has never felt so cold.

She wants to tell him that she’s not his girl. She’s not his toy anymore.

Damn it, she’s not this weak and helpless, not after all she’s been through! Sit up, Eleanor! Snap his weak, skinny hand and punch his eyes fully out those sockets!

He clicks his tongue in disappointment; “Naughty, naughty…Where’s my smile? Y’know how angry it makes me when I don’t get my smile, cutie.”

No, please, don’t be angry. She hasn’t forgotten what happens when he’s angry. How could she ever forget?

His other hand begins to slip down beneath her waistband.

Oh, shirt…Please, no…!

“I don’t think I’ll go to the trouble of dragging you to back to your cell.” He whispers, leaning in close, his earlobe dangling by a thread of coal-black skin; “We can stay right here, in the comfort of your little home. You can try to tell your friends I was here but there’ll be no sign of me. They won’t believe you. Crazy bench. Poor, traumatised, little mouse.”

His fingertips squeeze her nipple, twisting it.

Her mouth opens wide as his face comes inches away from her own, his breath like rancid sulphur, enough to make her gag. She’ll choke on her own vomit.

She can’t scream. She can’t forking scream.

“We’ll get to have fun every night, for the rest of your existence, just like you were supposed to.” He tells her, softly; “No one will see me. No one will hear you.”

She clenches her jaw. No. No, fork that. Her friends would never leave her alone with him again.

Michael. Michael will believe her. He’ll stay with her, if he has to. He’ll stop him, again, just like-

“You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?”

Eleanor shudders.

The fingers dig into her skin like a hawks talons.

“I don’t care for being a third wheel in any relationship, sweet cheeks. By the time I’m done forking my way back into that pretty head of yours, I’m gonna be all you can think about again.” He growls in a dangerously low voice.

He’s climbing over her now, almost on top again, positioning himself so she’s forced to look at his hideous, semi-cremated corpse. His hair is gone, bar a few stubborn brown strands, but there’s no mistaking those eyes.

“He’s not coming to save you again. I made sure of that.”

Trevor holds up a bow-tie, splattered with blue demon blood.

A tear leaks from Eleanor’s right eye.

No….No, no, no…

With a vicious snarl, he tugs the fabric tight in both of his hands and pushes it down over Eleanor’s throat.

-

Gasping for dear, sweet air, Eleanor sits up and clasps at her neck.

It’s with overwhelming relief that she finds only her own unmarked skin, not cloth or slimy fingers crushing her windpipe. The sensation threatens to bring a wave of tears as she curls her legs up, quickly glancing around her bedroom to make sure she’s alone. Yes, she is…Good. Fork, she’s shaking like a leaf.

The storm that had been present in her dream seems to have remained purely in her subconscious, the sky outside clear and peaceful as always. There has to be the odd bout of rain to clear out the weather system now and then, but she’s usually given a warning for that. She never used to be scared of lightning. If anything, it once seemed cool, and always made for a distraction when one needed to smash their ex’s windscreen without alerting the neighbourhood watch.

Then again, there used to be a lot of things that never scared her before.

_When the first strike hits the ocean, miles out from the shore, Eleanor’s scream nearly bursts her own ear-drums. Her feet kick the board, sending Colonel Mustard and Miss Scarlet rolling towards her opponents._

_Her mind flickers distortedly with memories of the electricity coming down to target her body, the intense heat lashing the flesh from her bones in one swift motion._

_She barely has time to mourn the loss after the agony before he makes it regrow._

_“Now that was fun! Beats anything at Six Flags, huh?” He had grinned, rubbing his hands together, “Let’s go again!”_

_Her cry of ‘no’ is cut off by a second strike-_

_Somehow, in the space of those two bursts of lightning, Eleanor winds up underneath the bed in her room, curled up as small as possible._

_There’s footsteps entering, cautiously, and she closes her eyes in case it’s who she fears, even though she would recognise those striped socks anywhere. It could always be a trick._

_“Hey…” Michael says, kneeling beside the bed; “It’s only a game, Eleanor, I’m almost certain there’s no risk of a real butcher going about bludgeoning widows with candlesticks…Oh, wait, it was the lightning wasn’t it.”_

_For an all-knowing angel, he can be such a dumbash at times._

_“Shirt, I’m sorry. I didn’t think…I should’ve got Janet to warn us if there was gonna be lightning with the storm tonight.” He sighs, reaching his hand under; “C’mon. You’ll feel much better after you’ve beaten us both at this fascinating game, especially considering Janet probably already knows who killed the fictional person.”_

_Eleanor tries to settle her breathing as she sees the hand beckon her out. She inches her way back from underneath the bed and crawls into Michael’s waiting arms. His hands stroking over her back reassure her that the lightning hasn’t flayed her this time. She’s in one piece. He’ll make sure it stays that way._

_It takes five minutes of being rocked in his arms, his fingers gently stroking through her hair, before she’s ready to get back to whooping his and Janet’s immortal ashes at Clue._

_The next time there has to be a storm, Michael makes sure to blacken the windows and sound-proof the house._

Slipping out from her tangled duvet, Eleanor’s feet find her slippers and she ventures outside. Her parting clown door makes no haunting circus music, as that’s been disabled, for the good of all mankind.

She immediately spots Chidi asleep with his feet on the coffee table, his head rolled back on the sofa. There’s a stack of marked essays to his right and an open copy of Kant’s _Perpetual Peace_ open on his lap. Can she get some of that?

It’s almost adorable enough to ease her spine-chilling terror for a brief moment.

For someone who gets so anxious every waking hour, he’s a surprisingly heavy sleeper. He barely stirs as Eleanor shifts him to laying on his side, removing his glasses, placing the feathered blanket over him so he doesn’t wake up with his neck all crooked. She doesn’t tug the book from his hands, as she knows from experience it’s like trying to pry a security blanket from a sleeping toddler, basically impossible.

She could try to wake him. She could tell him about her dream. He wouldn’t be angry at her for waking him up, he never is, the sweet dork. His arms are so jacked, that every hug he gives her almost lulls her into feeling as safe as Michael’s do, though human strength doesn’t really mean so much against the threat of a demon, she knows from experience.

No, Chidi deserves to rest. He deserves to dream of partying it up with all those philosophers he hopes to meet when they get to the real Good Place, or swimming in bookmarks, whatever makes him happy.

After she’s drank some juice straight from carton in the fridge (yes, Chidi hates it when she does this, but he doesn’t need to know if he’s passed out), she tries to stop the shudders pulsing through her body.

Fork, it’s over! Why is she so wired? She should be over this by now, damn it!

She sneaks out the house through the back door, tugging her grey sweater over her thin pyjama t-shirt.

“Janet?” She calls, carefully.

“Hi there.” Her friend appears, far more chipper than Eleanor could hope to be at this hour; “Everything okay?”

She shakes her head; “I had another bad one…Where’s Michael?”

“He’s in his office. Do you want me to walk you there?”

“No, I’ll be fine, babe, just…Maybe a quick demon scan?”

Janet nods and does a sweep with her red beams, turning a full 360 degrees, before rounding back on Eleanor.

“I can confirm every fake resident is in their homes. Of course, they don’t sleep, so I can’t promise they won’t see you.”

She’s really not in the mood to be pounced on by whatever surprise torture Vicky or her goons can spontaneously come up with.

“Perhaps an invisibility cloak then?”

“I can give you one that will make you invisible to most demons sight, but remember that, like Michael, they have the ability to use other senses I can’t mask without disintegrating your entire essence which would be a bit of a bummer.” Janet warns.

She can agree on that as well. It would be so much easier if Janet could give them something to disguise them all to be able to escape every demon except the one they trusted forever until they managed to sneak into the Good Place, but it turns out reality is a bench.

Eleanor accepts the cloak anyway, if for nothing else that it’s incredibly comfy and snug once she’s wrapped herself in it.

She remembers walking through the town on her first day back from the beach, hours after just having gutted the man she had fallen in love with, convinced that what they had was shattered beyond repair and that she would never forgive him. That hardened resolved had lasted less than a day and yet felt as long and bitter as a whole Winter.

She doesn’t like to think of what would have happened if she and her friends had carried on going to Mindy’s. If they’d chosen to stay and not go to find Michael on the beach.

It’s not worth stressing over. It’s bad enough she can’t escape her imaginary fears that plague her at least once a week.

_The raindrops patter against the window as she sits in Michael’s lap on the armchair, playing a private game of Pictionary, each one having to guess what the other is sketching under the time limit._

_“Uhm…a bed? A hospital? No, wait, a scientist? Wait, is that a leg or…” Michael rolls his eyes; “It’s an orgy, isn’t it?”_

_“Ah-ha, I think you just got that one in time, dude.” Eleanor grins, passing the pad to him._

_“Are all of yours going to be somewhat pornographic?” He asks, fingers tracing down the top of her spine as she shuffles on his knee._

_She looks slightly offended; “Not all of them! I drew that one of the movie Titanic, remember?”_

_“Using the scene when they had intercourse in the car.”_

_“Hey, that’s the moment everyone remembers, not the stupid ice burg.” Eleanor pokes him in the chest with the pen._

_He plucks it from her fingers and gives her hand a tug to pull her close, pushing his lips forward to meet hers. Eleanor palms his chest as she reciprocates the kiss, moaning softly before moving back, giving him a sleepy smile as she nuzzles him._

_“What was that for?” She asks, not that she’s complaining._

_“You mean you’re not trying to make me horny with all these erotic sketches?”_

_Eleanor giggles, moving to stroke his cheek; “Maybe later…Believe it or not, I’m actually comfy here.” She moves to nestle her head on his shoulder, snuggling close, perfectly content as she listens to the rain outside; “I reckon Janet could bring down some thunder and lightning out there and I’d be fine.”_

_Michael plants a kiss on her forehead._

_“Want me to test that?” He asks._

_“Fork, no, it was just talk. Now your turn, buddy,” She pushes the notepad to him again. “Maybe try to do something a dumb human like me is gonna know this time, instead of drawing the concept of regret or whatever that last one was.”_

As beautiful as the starlit sky above her now, Eleanor would gladly trade it for a heavy downpour of rain and to be sheltered somewhere warm, in Michael’s arms again.

When she reaches his office door, she gives a soft knock, even though he’s told her countless times that she doesn’t need to. They can never be too sure that he’s not having some sort of meeting with one of his demon employees. Considering they don’t have a sleep schedule, it wouldn’t be surprising for them to try to ‘scheme’ the next day’s worth of torture with the boss.

“Michael?”

When there’s no reply, she pushed the door open, finding his chair empty. There’s no sign of life in the room and something immediately feels off.

For starters, her demon boyfriend is such a neat freak and yet there’s open files and pieces of paper left carelessly on his desk.

Curious, she moves over, hoping with all her gut she’s not about to come across some other devastating revelation like when she found his tape recordings.

At least he spoke English in those.

The writings on the forms are all in that alien gibberish she has no hope of working out. But the files do come with pictures. Headshots of people clipped to each one. She doesn’t recognise any of them. None of them appear to be any of the fake residents in the town. They vary in race, gender, age. A closer look at the hints of clothing they way quickly tells Eleanor that they probably vary in time period as well.

“Hey, Janet.”

“Hi again.” She appears on the other side of the desk while Eleanor is holding the file with the photo of a young red-haired girl.

“Can you tell me who these are?”

“Certainly. The file in your hand belongs to Elizabeth Sherling, a waitress from New York in the mid fifties.” Janet points to one of the others; “That file belongs to Jamie Crimmon, a British musician from the early nineties. That file with the antimatter stain on it belongs to a man named Larry…No, sorry, mistranslated, Gary Gerg-.”

“Actually, never mind, you don’t need to go through all of them.” Eleanor waves off; “Why was Michael looking at these? He’s not bringing more people here is he?”

“Very unlikely. Four humans is the standard amount of souls Architects are given to design their neighbourhoods around.”

There must be a lot more Architects, Eleanor thinks to herself.

“Michael must have requested these files from you, didn’t he say why?” She asks, before biting her lip; “Lemmie guess, you’re not allowed to tell me.”

“On the contrary, Michael has said that, in keeping with the promise he made to you, he has given you sole permission to access all the private information he shares with me upon your request.” Janet tells her with a smile.

Eleanor feels a warm glow in her chest for a moment. Janet wouldn’t lie. She physically can’t.

“So, he didn’t tell you what he wanted with them?” She asks.

“He merely requested the files and then dismissed me.” Janet explains, before a look of uncertainty passes over her; “Except..”

“What, babe?”

The not-robot blinks; “His mood did seem very…agitated. Not work-stress frustrated, like he used to get. He’s not snapped at me or anything, it’s just…I detected high levels of anxiety in him and I wasn’t sure the best way to ask him about it. I know when Jason can tell if I’m feeling lost or uncertain, he asks me if I’m okay. Thing is, I have to tell him if I’m okay or not, I can’t hide it from him, but if I ask you guys, apparently if you say ‘yes’ it rarely means you’re okay…?”

Eleanor nods; “Yeah, that’s usually the case.”

She glances down at the photographs again. What is it about these peeps that have been upsetting Michael? Why hasn’t he talked to her about it if something is getting to him? True, they don’t have as much time alone lately, but they only came back from a weekend at the beach house a couple of weeks ago. Was this playing on his mind then when they had their big group slumber party?

“Do you know if there’s any connection between the humans in these files?” Eleanor asks her.

“Yes! They’re all human!”

Eleanor tilts her head at her.

“Oh, right, a bit more…” Janet continues; “Honestly, there’s no strong relations between them, or similar causes of death. The only other factor they had in common is that they’re all in the Bad Place.”

Ah.

Eleanor takes a breath and looks up, having worked it out from those two words alone.

“Has Michael been sleeping?” She told him to, even if she can’t be there with him. Even just a short nap on the couch if the doofus isn’t going to make a secret bedroom for himself in this ridiculously fancy building that only seemed to contain room inside for a corridor and an office. It was like an anti-Tardis; smaller on the inside.

“He’s…tried.” Is all that Janet says.

Eleanor scoops all the files and papers into a pile. She can’t be bothered to sort them out but she’ll make some effort to tidy his desk for his return.

“About as successfully as me, I bet.” She sighs; “I thought you said Michael was here?”

“He was when you asked me, I believe he went for a walk.” Janet blinks again, rapidly now, looking unsure; “His location is shifting and I think his mood is masking my ability to keep a steady track on him but he was last heading to the beach.”

“Which beach? Our beach?”

“No, the one eastward, near to where my kill switch is. Fun fact; it’s actually called Plunger’s Point!” Janet expresses, gleefully.

“Yeah, as good as he is with designing things, he’s not too great on names.”

_She finds him sat on one of the larger rocks on the shores, cradling something in his palm._

_“Whacha got there, dude?” She asks, scooting up close._

_“Oh, Eleanor, look at this little guy.” He shows her what is definitely the smallest and cutest turtle she’s seen laying in his hand; “Aren’t they just fascinating? I mean their body is their house! How crazy is that?”_

_She nods, sidling up close; “Pretty crazy. I mean, just this morning I rode a horse made out of water – but, sure, the turtle is neat.”_

_“Nokk horses got nothing on this fellah.”_

_Eleanor’s not quite sure she gets the appeal, other than generic adorable factor, but even that is outdone by the childlike glint in Michael’s eyes._

_“You gonna give him a name?”_

_“Uhm…Bob.”_

_“Really? All the thousands of names you’ve come across in the…eternity you’ve been around, all those different cultures and languages, and that’s the best you can come up with? Bob?” Eleanor snorts._

_He gives her a frown; “I happen to like Bob! And so does he…Wait, sorry,” He looks at the turtle again; “They, their pronouns are they.”_

_“Sure, whatever they want.” Eleanor slides her arms around his neck._

_She watches as he settles it back into the water, where it quickly finds its way back to the other turtles at the reef._

_“Does this place have a name?” She asks, glancing back at the beach house._

_“Not really. I didn’t put much thought into naming places when I designed the neighborhood. It’s just…the town and so-and-sos houses.” His hands find her own as they hang down from around his neck; “And I pretty much crafted this area up last minute, just for you…So, I guess, if it’s gonna have a name it can be…Eleanor’s Beach?”_

_She chuckles against his ear; “That’s lazy even by my standards.”_

_“Let me know if you come up with something better, clever clogs.” He says before kissing her hand._

Eleanor keeps the hood of the invisibility cloak up as she skirts around the town and over the grassy fields before coming out to the beach. Janet’s Plunger Beach, that is, not her own.

Her heart sinks a little when she can’t immediately see Michael anywhere.

Where the fork are you, dude?

She thought they would have no more secrets, yet he was clearly keeping something from her again.

The waves roll in against the shore and Eleanor removes her slippers, leaving them by the beach so she can tread on the lukewarm sand and take a walk. She lost count of how many times she liked to do this during that year, once she had gotten the use of her legs back, once she was no longer afraid of venturing outside at night. Michael came with her at first, hand in hers, while other nights she liked to go alone with an iPod to get some time to herself and Rhianna.

Looking back now, she realises how much she fell in love with the ocean and the sky more than she ever did on Earth, as much as she fell in love with Michael.

Only now does she realise she’s no longer shivering from her nightmare.

She looks up at the stars. Thousands of them, too many to count, unless you’re some bored immortal. Her tormenter is lying on, possibly, every single one, spread out beyond any easy chance of repair. Eleanor takes a breath, closing her eyes, trying to block out the image of that charred, walking carcass beside her bed, her body paralysed and helpless to fight him off.

Just a dream. It’s just a stupid dream.

He’s not coming back, he’s not…

He’s…

“Hi.”

She gasps, the fear a mere blink, before her body recognises the hands moving around her waist, far quicker than her mind recognises the voice that surprises her.

Eleanor looks down, seeing only his hands, unable to see her own torso through the cloak.

Exhaling, deflating with relief, she lets the arms enfold her and she gratefully leans back against the six-foot demon who holds her close.

“You saw me?” She remembers what Janet said about demons who can see in extra dimensions bypassing the effects of the cloak.

“Just your aura. This little outline of yellow walking along the sand.” He whispers.

Eleanor smiles, her hand moving up his arm, “How did you know it was me?”

“I could pick your aura out of a billion humans, easy.” She can’t tell if he’s boasting again or being romantic, possibly both; “Plus there’s the smell of shrimp you ate before bed.”

Not so magical then, she smirks.

Settling in Michael’s arms, she finally starts to feel ready to sleep again, just a little.

“I was looking for you. I dreamed about…you know, again. The usual.” She’s bored of going through it at this point.

His arms tighten around her stomach a little.

“Wanna go back to my office?”

“I’d rather stay here…but I know it’s risky, being out in the open. Even with this thing on, Vicky’s gonna wonder why you’re groping the air.”

Michael pulls back, taking her hand instead.

“I’ve got an idea.”

He turns to the sea and waves his hand, parting the waters to create a corridor which he leads her down until their heads are below sea level while remaining bone dry. Eleanor is speechless, following his steps, still managing to be amazed by the extent of his powers when he chooses to use them.

Once they’re a metre below the surface, he waves his hand again, causing the water to roll in again while keeping a forcefield around them, keeping them hidden below in their own private aquarium.

“Nice. You turned the sea into a fort!” Eleanor grins, taking a moment to see all the jelly fish and eels and little non-fiery squids floating around them, lit up by the bright, large silver moon hanging over them; “This’ll do. Now,” she turns to the Architect; “Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

Michael blinks; “I thought you were the one who had the nightmare?”

“Yeah, but that’s old news by now, dude.” Eleanor looks up at him, giving her no-nonsense stare; “You’re the one with the weird files on your desk like a crazy detective…so what’s going on?”

He looks down, a crack in his assuring mask now that she’s seen through him again.

Eleanor reaches up to rub her palm against his cheek.

“Janet said they were all in the Bad Place.” She says, seeing the break in his eyes; “…You knew them, didn’t you?”

Michael stifles an incredulous laugh, his mouth twitching.

“Knew them? That’s putting it lightly.” He whispers.

“I mean you…” Eleanor takes a breath; “You…tortured them. Right?”

His breathing is shaky, his hand trembling a little as it holds hers.

“They were the last ones…before you guys.” Michael confesses, “I didn’t get to torture any human, directly, for the two hundred years I was studying as an apprentice. I just helped design a lot of districts…Sometimes I got to oversee them at play, briefly, but once they were done, I just moved on to the next one…”

He moves them both to sit on the sand, which is somehow as dry as the section she had been walking on barefoot before. Michael waves a hand, summoning one of the files again, the red-haired waitress.

“On my last day as a personal torture demon, this was the last human I dealt with before I got my placement.” He tells her, looking haunted as he stares at her photo; “Elizabeth…Liz, as she preferred. I don’t…want to tell you the things I did to her…She begged me to stop and I…I wasn’t sure at the time why I felt so relieved once my shift with her was over. I told myself it was because I was moving on, moving up…I never thought about her again after that moment…Not until I saw her face with the millions of others in my head one night, couple weeks back. Not until I…heard her beg again…”

He puts the photo down and rubs his hands over his face. Eleanor’s stomach twists. She wants to tell him that it's okay, that he’s not that thoughtless monster anymore…but it’s tricky. She knows exactly how it feels to be in Liz’s chains. And, worse, she got out while Liz is still trapped there with the others.

All she can do is scoot closer to him, placing a hand on his knee.

“You’re not gonna help her by torturing yourself.”

Michael sniffs; “I know that. But it feels like the least I can do…If she and the rest of them have to suffer, it’s only right I feel some agony as well...You can’t even read the file, can you? Do you know what lost them points? Cursing, littering, not giving to charity because they had enough trouble scraping their own income…Stupid, petty little things that used to sound like they made sense to me, like it justified what we did but…It’s all bullshirt.”

“Wait, you said you were an Apprentice for two hundred years…that girl died in the fifties?”

He gives a wave; “Jeremy Bearimy. We would get files from all sorts of timelines at once. You think you four all died at the exact same time?”

Eleanor doesn’t even attempt to understand that more in case her already tired brain crumbles.

“Anyway, man…Look,” She gives his arm a gentle tug; “I believe that, one day, when you find a way to get us into the Good Place, that we can find a way to talk those angels or whoever is in charge of rethinking this ridiculous system. And that’s our best chance of saving Lizzy here and all the others. Maybe. Until then…If you wanna feel guilty or regret what you did, sure, I get it, but…Don’t keep it all to yourself, yeah? Even if it’s only Janet, she would wanna hear it. She cares about you. We all do.”

She snakes her arms around his middle, resting her head on his shoulder.

“Big dumb squishy squid.” Eleanor murmurs.

He takes a breath, hand moving up to stroke her hair again; “And you? Are you gonna keep what woke you up in a bottle or did you want to find me to tell me?”

It’s much easier to be brave when you have to be brave for someone else.

Eleanor feels the shudder again, curling closer to Michael.

“He was there. He was at my bed, all…burned and mangled and…so gross!” She winces, remembering the falling pieces of rotten flesh; “He said he’d put himself back together and that he’d come back for me.” She curls her fingers in Michael’s shirt; “…S-said I belonged to him.”

“Fork that.” His arms move around her, hugging her tight; “You belong to no one. Even I’m smart enough to know that…I got the stabbing wound to remind me.”

She gives a light chuckle.

“I might not be your sweet girl.” Eleanor says, looking up and into his eyes again; “But I am yours, Michael…because I choose to be, that is.” She smiles; “Until Steve Austin gets here and then I’m gone.”

He returns the smile; “Fair enough.”

And he pulls her close for another kiss, the two of them coiled close in each other’s arms, hidden safe in their little bubble.

It’s saying a lot for how tired Eleanor is that she can’t go further than a tight embrace and sweet kisses peppering each other’s lips and cheeks for a few, blissful moments, until the exhaustion begins to drag her down again.

A yawn is what forces her to pull back from Michael’s lips.

“Let me take you home, sleepy head.” He asks of her, the movement of his hand on her hair lulling her far too much.

She really doesn’t feel like going back to her room right now. Hopefully Chidi won’t be too freaked out by her absence when he wakes up and Janet will tell him where she is.

“Wanna stay with you.” She mumbles, rubbing her eyes and wrapping her arms around him; “Please.”

Eleanor gives him that look. That classic look with a slight push of her lips and a wrinkle of her nose.

He sighs and she knows her spell has worked again. Fool-proof.

“Can we go to Eleanor’s Beach? Our house?” She asks, still unable to be bothered to come up with a creative name.

“It’s about a day’s walk. Even if we get on the train, it’s gonna be morning by the time we get there.” He tells her.

“Then turn into a sexy merman or male Ursula, whatever, and swim me there, genius.” She pokes his chest; “Use your imagination.”

“I could turn into a shark and try to carry you there, but I might accidentally eat you.”

She widens her eyes. She’s not exactly horny right now but-

“No, Eleanor, that was not an innuendo.”

She pouts again.

Rubbing her heavy eyes again, she curls back into his arms. However, and wherever he takes her is fine. Even if it means staying in this bubble until sunrise, so long as he’s there.

Michael kisses her hair again, wrapping her up tight as her brain starts to power down.

“He’s never coming back. If he does, which he can’t, I’ll just throw him right back up into the darkest corners of space again.” He whispers to her, the last words that caress her before sleep takes her again; “You’re safe, Eleanor. I’ve got you.”

*

Once he had said those words to her before.

“I’ve got you.”

Back when they started this journey together. Not in the office. Not ‘Eleanor, come on in’. Not that journey. That was merely a warm up before the true adventure.

“I’ve got you.”

When Michael had uttered those words on the train, his arm around her frail and broken form, he’d been talking to a possession. A precious puppet to play with, partly for his amusement, mostly to impress, with the one true goal being his own glory and recognition. A chance to be Someone.

He’d said those words as a subtle, sly reminder to her of who she belonged to. Of the one she should truly fear, to try to keep satisfied, to want to stay with and dance to the symphony he’d so intricately composed.

“I’ve got you.”

Now the words are a pledge and promise. A swearing of fealty.

Of submission.

She says that she’s his, but surely it’s her who owns him. She has done since the moment, that fateful day, that she looked up at him with eyes full of trust that he knew he couldn’t bring himself to break. Not then, not now, not ever again.

“I’ve got you.”

He whispers the words to her slumbering form as he carries her to their house, to her beach. She had a point, changing his legs into tentacles did make the journey much quicker, and even feel a bit more natural.

It’s almost dawn by the time he’s laying her down on the bed in her room, unwrapping her limp body from the cloak Janet gave her and taking a moment to watch her sleep.

_“Why do you call it that?” She asks him one day, after she’s just come out the bath; “You sleep there too, you goop.”_

_“I designed it for you. It will always be your room, full of your possessions. I’m just…something you take with you to bed at night.” He responds, trying not to let his eyes wander over her too much while she’s in that little towel that barely reaches her knees._

_She gives him a playful smirk; “Like a stuffed animal? You make a better snuggle-buddy than that minion.”_

_When she winks at him, he has to turn away, to get back to making dinner while she goes to dry her hair._

_Fork…was that…flirting? No, that was just ‘Eleanor’, surely, she spoke to everyone like that!_

_Didn’t she?_

_Wow, it suddenly got hot. She can’t…want him, surely…She shouldn’t. She wouldn’t, if she knew. Not that she ever will but…_

_Don’t be an idiot, Michael. This is already complicated enough without it getting worse._

_You don’t deserve her. You’re not special. She’ll never want to be…_

His.

She had said it…That she was his.

When he lays down beside her and spoons her close, hands secure around her stomach, he says the words one last time before trying to let himself sleep, focusing on the echo of her words in his head as opposed to the guilt weighing heavy in his chest.

If her words have any truth to them, he'll spend the rest of his existence proving that he's worthy of them.

“I’ve got you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ten points if you spotted the Schurniverse reference. ;)


	8. Hunger Pangs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eleanor suffered more than one form of starvation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by this prompt: "Whumper enjoys a lovely meal of Thanksgiving turkey. Whumpee is curled up under the table, gratefully gnawing on any bones that get tossed down to them." from this blog (https://whumpster-dumpster.tumblr.com/)

She feels like she’s been kneeling there forever. Her calves are numb from pins and needles.

Every time she sways, weakly, he gives her a sharp kick in her protruding ribs to keep her upright. The smell from the table is intoxicating, the closest she’s been allowed to come to any sort of ‘high’. Even though she knows she wouldn’t be allowed to fall asleep, she thinks she could curl up and visualize the taste of it in her mouth, if he was merciful enough to give her just a few minutes. But that won’t happen. There is no mercy when it comes to cosmic justice, not here.

“Hands behind your back, slut. Keep up straight.”

Eleanor grips her wrist tight against her spine and juts her chin up, shoulders back. There’s a mirror in front of her so she can see herself. See what she’s become. There’s very little fat left on her buddy, the once comfortable weight she had before now long gone, nothing but grey, sunken skin on bone. From the way he’s pulled out most of her hair recently, she barely even looks human. That’s probably the whole point of this. It hasn’t felt so blatant until this moment.

The mirror is propped up against the leg of a tall table where her not-so-favorite demon is sat in his chair, barely a foot away from where she’s been ordered to kneel, naked, although the bruises that cake her body could almost appear like a twisted covering.

Trevor munches into a churro dog, lips slapping together, as noisy as he can be.

The selection of food on the plates before him is ludicrous. A pile of some of Eleanor’s favorite snacks and appetisers. He’s been clearing each one of the hot, succulent dishes for an hour now, all of them refilling with a clap of his hands every time Eleanor thinks she’s close to the end of this stupid new game of his. She does her best not to look, the smell on its own enough to torture her, to make her concave stomach rumble and piss Trevor off for ‘interrupting his meal’, inviting a harsh smack over the head or boiling hot gravy poured down her back.

And God – not that there’s any chance of Them existing – forbid that she cries. Or whimpers.

Just stay still. It will end. They always do. He’ll get bored and then leave her alone with the smell and maybe, just maybe, she’ll get her chance to escape into her imagination, seeing as she’s locked out of her own dreams.

“Not such a ‘snack’ anymore, are you Shellstrop?” Trevor teases, picking up a rib soaked in barbeque sauce in both hands and tearing into the tender meat; “Nowhere near as tasty as this bad boy, I’ll tell ya! Heh. Who would want you now, huh? Even those high school nerds you suckered in only to get them to do your homework for you would now be thinkin’ they dodged a bullet!”

She catches herself wincing at his words, wishing they didn’t affect her like they did. She doesn’t want to be ashamed for being secure in knowing how hot she is…was. Fuck. He’s right. She looks like E.T’s crazy aunt. If she had the strength, she’d punch the mirror, grab a shard and stab it into Trevor’s foot-

His hand grabs her chin, squeezing it tight.

“I saw that, short stuff.” He leans down to glare at her, spitting droplets of sauce and gravy in her face; “You wanna try and go for me again? Go for it. Then I can compare how eating your ribs are after I’m done with this.”

Eleanor lowers her gaze. No. Please. It was just a dumb blip in her brain.

She…knows better now. She wouldn’t dare.

“Thought so. Clever whore.” He laughs and lets go, sitting back in his chair and ripping off the last chunks from around the bone.

The relief that washes over Eleanor when he decides not to punish her insolence…She hates it. She hates that she knows, fully well, how much of herself she’s lost. Not just physically. She could handle losing her looks, her hair, her shape, her ability to walk and talk…But the thought of losing the grit and confidence that has been her constant companion since she realised there was no one else who was going to take care of her? That terrifies her more than anything Trevor could, and has, threatened her with.

She’s long stopped attempting to keep track of how long she’s been here. There’s nothing for her to scratch the days into the wall, even if she had some way of telling day from night, what with no objects left with her when she’s alone and her fingernails regularly pulled out. A dumbass part of her is still…waiting. Waiting for something. Anything. Rescue. Escape. Waking up from this nightmare.

How long before he steals any last sense of hope?

“I think you’re starting to know your place now. Aren’t you, my little mole-rat?” Trevor says, his elbow leaning on the table as he regards her, so proud of the work he’s done on her so far.

Eleanor keeps to her position. Hands behind her. Back straight. Eyes forward.

Letting him think he’s won is not the same as letting him actually win.

“Maybe you deserve a treat…” He picks up one of the finished ribs and dangles it over the side of the table; “There’s some teeny tiny iddy bits of meat left on this one…Would you like some?”

She strains her eyes to stay on her own in the mirror. She can see her own weakness. The temptation.

Her stomach rumbles again and she cringes, waiting for the kick.

It doesn’t come. Instead, Trevor snickers and keeps waving the bone down in front of her face. Oh, fuck, the smell! Her vision blurs as tears prick between her exhausted eyelashes. She can hear him laugh as she licks her lips, not wanting to demean herself further by drooling. She’s dehydrated enough as it is, she doesn’t need to waste more liquid in her stupid, rotting body.

“Go on. I’m feeling generous.” He says, lowering his tone.

She pants, closing her eyes. _Someone. Please. Stop this._

“I said I’m feeling generous…Or are you gonna be ungrateful, bitch?” His voice turns sinister again, as it does when she’s seconds away from getting the shit beaten out of her; “You know what happens to rude little sluts. Eat.”

Her hands detach and she reaches up one to take it.

Trevor yanks it back.

“Now, I might be wrong, but I don’t remember saying you were allowed to move your hands from where I told you to keep them, did I?” He grins at her.

Fucking…

Eleanor puts them back behind her. She opens her mouth.

He places the bone between her teeth and she readily takes it. As she tries to work her tongue around it, her mouth loses its grip and the bone falls out onto the floor.

The demon chuckles some more; “Okay, okay, I’ll be nice…You don’t have to keep sitting up for me. Just keep those hands where I want them.”

She collapses down onto her side and wriggles to where she can position her mouth over the discarded rib, sucking every last drop of barbeque sauce and licking each fleck of meat she can find, trying not to catch a glimpse in the mirror of how pathetic she must look. Worse than a dog.

Don’t think about it. Don’t give a shit.

This is the closest she’s had to any real food since she arrived and, fuck it, she’s going to indulge in this tiny morsel of pleasure before the rest of the horror continues. If it gives Trevor his kicks then maybe he’ll throw her some more and then at least this game brings them both some form of fulfilment, no matter how twisted it is.

“Hungry little whore, aren’t you, El-cat.” He gives her a nudge with his shoe; “You almost look as though you’re enjoying that. I think it’s worth putting on my Insta feed.”

She hears the click of his phone as he takes a picture. Whatever.

Just eat. His demon buds sharing photos of their daily tortures don’t need to concern her.

“Maybe I should send this to your pals in the Goody Two Shoes Place?” Trevor asks, making her still, curled around her bone; “They must be curious to see how you’re getting on down here…If any of them do still give a fuck about ‘the imposter’.”

Damn it.

Eleanor closes her eyes and continues to lick, doing her best to ignore him, even at the cost of debasing herself more. Pretend to be nothing but a dumb animal who can’t understand anything but the desire to eat. She’s not far off anyway.

“You still think about them, don’t ya?” Trevor’s shoe pokes at her shoulder; “Those neighbours of yours you got close with. That nerd with the glasses and a hard-on for ethics? Should I send this video to him, let him know I’m keeping you well fed, huh?”

Tears leak down her cheeks, adding some salt to the bone which is almost licked clean.

“You still remember their names. You still remember yours. You remember how hot you were. How cool and reckless; trust me, I’ll never forget, I was a huge fan. But now I’ve literally stripped away all those awesome layers, I can see it was just a big ol’ costume. I can see what’s underneath. And it ain’t pretty to look at.” He taunts; “It only has one use and we both know what that is, don’t we.”

She’s sucking for comfort more than hunger now. There’s nothing left for her to ingest. The bone is just one object left to cling to as reality presses hard against her sore, tender flesh.

“Don’t worry, ding dong. One day it will all be gone. Your memories, your life, your name. There won’t be anything left for you to miss. There won’t be anyone to be ashamed, as far as you know.” Trevor starts to stroke the hard sole of his shoe along her back; “You’ll just be a thing. A nameless, silent, stupid ass thing for me to play with. Just like the rest of them. And it will be so much better for you. I mean, not gonna lie, you’ll be miserable and in pain forever but…At least it will feel like it’s all you’ve ever known.”

Trevor claps his hands. The bone vanishes. Eleanor makes a keening sound and kneels up again, her mouth hanging open, almost ready to beg for more before she feels the loss of her tongue again. It comes and goes as He wills.

“Still hungry?” he tilts his head at her.

She nods.

Yes. Yes, please.

She doesn’t want to think about losing her mind anymore. She doesn’t want to think about no longer existing as anything but a mindless fucktoy. Just let her eat, let her have something, anything to hold onto to, to distract her from that biggest fear closing in on her.

Trevor picks up another rib and begins eating it again, faster this time, just as loud as before. He leaves a little bit more meat on when he dangles it over the table.

“First things first…You better have something to wash down that last one, don’t you think?” He turns in his chair and spreads his legs.

Eleanor bites the inside of her lip.

Whatever he has planned for her to ‘drink’, she knows will spoil any sweet taste that is currently tingling on what little remains of her sliced tongue. But if it means she gets another one, then…

With a shaky breath, she shuffles forward on her knees, letting his hand cup the back of her head.

“That’s my pet.”

*

There are fingers on her head again. Different, now. They don’t grab clumps of her hair. They don’t force her to move and order her to open up, to take what she’s given. To be grateful.

The fingers are gentle as they stroke down her recently washed locks. Soothing, almost.

She sways, a wave of tiredness crashing into her, and this time there’s no hard shoe connecting brutally with her ribs. Just more stroking. A sweet voice of concern shushing her nearby, drawing her mind back into the world she had slipped away from, for a brief moment. Eleanor blinks, opening her eyes, seeing the cream carpet beneath her slippers. Two things which are clear enough reminders that she’s no longer in her cell.

“Deep breaths. C’mon, Eleanor.” The gentle voice becomes clear and she obeys, inhaling and exhaling steadily, taking in the warm air of her surroundings; “That’s it.”

The fingers move to rub circles between her shoulder blades and she leans back into them.

They always know just the right spot that she needs seen to…

She blinks some more and looks to her side, her arms hugging her knees tight to her front. He’s there, beside her, looking concerned as always but a little less aghast than he did when he first brought her here. When his reaction to her panic attacks was to fret and hold her still and somehow manage to freak her out even more after a trip to Hell itself.

Now he’s there, not too close, not yet. The steady rock she needs to fall apart on.

“Micha’…” she barely manages, unused voice awfully raspy.

He smiles; “Hey, sweet girl. Welcome back.”

She melts at the name, having once detested being given any silly term of endearment that wasn’t a ‘babe’ – as that’s what she was – but hearing that one has become a consistent form of comfort. She glances around, at first confused as to why they seem to be in a very small tent when she doesn’t remember agreeing to go camping – surely after he’s read her file, her angel roommate would know that would be the last thing she’d want on this free recovery holiday of hers.

Then she recognises the bars holding the sheet up are actually table legs. She cringes again, remembering the mirror and the bones and…

The smell. Fork. She can still smell it.

“What is it? I thought I was starting to get good at this kitchen stuff. I know I overcooked the turkey a little bit but I didn’t think it was scary enough to hide under the table for.” He says, half jesting, half genuinely self-conscious, she can tell.

Now she feels guilty. _Ungrateful bitch. He worked hard to cook a nice meal for you and look what you do!_

“M’so…M’sor…” She starts to whimper, chest tightening again as she struggles.

“Hey, hey…” Michael reaches to touch one of her hands, his other moving to massage her back again; “Don’t be sorry. It’s not like it’s getting cold. I know I said I wouldn’t use much magic here, but I think I’ve earned using a little to keep those plates warm. We can eat whenever you’re ready…But you do need to eat, Eleanor. Please. You barely touched your lunch.”

That had made her feel shirty enough, leaving one and a half sandwiches, making the excuse of the walking exercise wearing her out and in need of a nap.

It’s not like she isn’t hungry. Fork it, she’s as hungry as she is tired, now those two needs are able to be met, it doesn’t mean she always gets them fulfilled. Her sleep is tainted by night terrors that stop her from fully resting, while the food placed before her quickly becomes less appetising when she remembers what she’s supposed to do in order to earn it…How she’s supposed to show her gratitude…

It’s been weeks now. Months, even. She knows she’s not supposed to do any of that. Michael has reminded her more than enough times that he doesn’t want…She doesn’t need to be that, ever again. This is her house, he told her. It’s her bed. It’s her food. It’s all hers…

“I know you’re hungry. Your aura has all these little holes in it, like swiss cheese.” Fork, even his descriptions are making her stomach growl; “That noise too makes it rather obvious. Do you want me to cook something else?”

She shakes her head. No. The food looks delicious.

She’s been watching him cook from the sofa while he left her in front of King of Queens, because he looks so forking cute in that apron with the squid on the front holding the spatula, frying pan and various other kitchen utensils in its tentacles. They rarely ate at the table, what with Eleanor’s legs still being pretty stiff, he would usually bring it over for her to eat on her lap. He’d made it extra special tonight, setting the table and snapping a couple of candles alight. If she didn’t know what an old school sap he was, she’d almost think he was trying to be romantic.

_Of course not. He’s not like that. He’s just…sweet._

Feeling touched by the effort, all the same, Eleanor had found the strength to get up and move over to sit take a seat. It was all going fine until Michael placed the plate of turkey and veg coated in gravy down in front of her.

“Bon appetit…Ugh, French really does ruin everything.” He’d said, failing to notice how quickly Eleanor’s face was paling.

_Thick, scalding juice runs down onto her back. She screams as he laughs above her, taking a bite out of the drumstick in his hand while he turns the gravy boat upside down with the other._

Everything had gone white after that, her mind dragged back through memory lane for a brutal visit before Michael’s caring hand pulled her back out.

“Let’s try sitting back at the table then, yeah?” He offers.

She shakes her head.

It’s not the food that brought the attack on. It was being sat in the chair, at a proper table, just as he’d sat more than once before her, starving her beyond death. She didn’t belong where he got to sit. The image that had been burned into her vision from having knelt in front of that mirror, watching herself wither and decay, was all that had stared up at her from the plate where the turkey should have been.

Her hand palms at the carpet.

“…S-stay.” She says, quietly, avoiding Michael’s eyes, “Need to…stay here. Eat…here. P-please.”

She needs to know her place. She can’t risk believing she could ever deserve to-

“Okay.”

Eleanor looks at him. Had it been that easy? He wasn’t going to fight her on this, for once?

Michael gives her a smile and shuffles out from under the table to reach up, grabbing both of their plates and bringing them underneath. He puts Eleanor’s in front of her, while he moves onto his side. He spears some broccoli with a fork to put in his mouth.

This is…Wait. This isn’t what she meant, is it?

Surely it doesn’t count if Michael is here too? A great heavenly being on the same level as a filthy wretch like her? Why would he want to…? He’s an angel, a God-thingy, he’s…

“Mmm…You know what, I think this is really neat! It’s like a secret clubhouse!” He smiles at her, a bit of green in his teeth.

Eleanor blinks at him.

He’s…adorable.

A breath escapes her, the tiniest hint of laughter. She feels her cheeks flush.

She cautiously picks up her own fork, doing her best to blot out the memories of feeling the boiling sauce on her skin, as she puts a piece of gravy-soaked white meat to her mouth and eats. Michael did explain before that it’s not actually turkey, no animal was really killed and slaughtered, that it’s all artificially constructed from magic. It’s basically the Universe’ best tofu.

And, she knows as she chews it in her mouth, it’s just as tasty as the real thing. Oh, fork…

She doesn’t know how much she’s crying until Michael’s thumb reaches to brush against her cheek when she’s finished her potatoes. Just being able to hold a fork is more than she was once allowed. She knows if Trevor were here, the only way he’d allow her to carry on eating would be to shove her face into the meal, then order her to lap it up like a feral mutt.

Eleanor waits until she’s consumed everything on her plate and Michael has returned after putting them in the sink to allow herself to properly cry.

His arms wrap tight around her, bringing her head to tuck under his chin, while he cradles her close.

Her fingers keep a grip on his shirt for the next few minutes until her sobs start to subside.

“I think a slumber party here would be cool but it’s a bit too cramped and we can’t see the TV.” He tells her and she manages another laugh to break up her tears; “You’ll have to teach me how to make one of those pillow forts, or we could get a load of empty boxes like Joey did?”

Eleanor just clings to him tighter. His long arms holding her against his clean shirt are all the fortress she needs to feel safe right now.

*

“They do move in herbs!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I have no idea, it’s just what the guy says.” Eleanor shrugs as they walk across the expansive field of grass, staring up at the giant long-necked dinosaurs stepping over them; “I guess because of the types of plants they eat? So they’re always moving around them?”

“Herds. They move in herds.” Michael corrects, giving her a nudge with his elbow.

Eleanor chews the inside of her mouth. That would make more sense but she’s hardly going to admit she was ever wrong on something, even when her companion has infinite more knowledge than her.

“That’s clearly basil that one’s chewing so I stand by what I said.” She reaches down to pick up a load of berries and leaves; “Here you go, pal! He won’t eat me, will he?”

“That’s a she, and no, of course not! I wouldn’t design anything in these simulations to hurt you.” Michael reassures her, raising a hand to wave for the sauropod’s attention; “Of course the teeth might take your hand off if you’re not careful but it’s fine, they’re herbivores.”

So, she might lose a hand but at least the dino will be nice enough to spit it out. Nice.

She can’t deny how breath-taking it is when the great creature rears its head down to happily take the food she offers up in its humungous jaws. She dares to give its snout a quick stroke before its nostrils widen as it exhales, blowing her back a little.

Laughing, she collapses back against Michael.

“You made her do that!”

“No!” He gasps, dramatically; “…Okay, yes. Tell me though, is it as cool as you imagined?”

Eleanor nods, grinning widely; “Pretty forking awesome! You gotta let me try to climb up its tail!”

“Why is it every time I create something tall, your first instinct is to climb it?” Michael asks, letting her link her arm through his as they continue to walk through his own Jurassic Park.

“Small person instinct, dude. We gotta get up as high as we can so we’re on the same level as giraffes like you and Janet. Either that or you let us all ride on your shoulders.”

He huffs; “I’m not as tall as a giraffe…or a dinosaur. But I could be.”

“Nah, your head’s big enough as it is.” She jostles against him as the reach a lake so Eleanor can get a glimpse of the prehistoric sharks skirting their fins through the water; “Can we race on some rhinos? Or each pick a T-rex and watch it wrestle, and the loser has to cook dinner?”

“I think I’d lose on purpose, you haven’t used an oven since you baked brownies in college.”

“Hey, no one complained about those!” She argues back with a wag of her finger in his face.

Michael rolls his eyes; “As I’ve said, you can do anything you want. You’re the one who’s wanted to see real dinosaurs since you snuck into see that film as a kid.”

“What little girl didn’t want a T-rex a pet?”

“Many, actually.” He points out, “We can blame all the pony and doll cartoon marketing in the eighties for that.”

“Says the guy who summoned a unicorn for me with actual pixie dust in its mane.” She takes a packet of crackers from their picnic earlier and tosses a few pieces into the water, watching the shark rise up to fight for it. “Actually….I know I’m not technically your ‘assistant’ anymore-.”

“I don’t remember officially firing you.”

Eleanor looks up at him. It hadn’t been mentioned since the morning that Michael announced his plans for ‘retirement’.

“I kinda took the whole ‘being exiled to Hell’ as my pink slip.”

“And then I brought you back. It was a mistake to let you go in the first place.” His tone turns serious, full of regret, a shadow passing on his face before he quickly cover it with his usual smile, turning to her; “Anyway, what were you gonna say?”

“Well, just that maybe when we eventually go back, I’d suggest not keeping the Good Place so pastel and unicorn friendly. Maybe throw in some dinosaurs and a portal to some weird planet ruled by bees or just…cool stuff? I know most of the humans you’ve got there are nerds but, trust me, they could do with a taste of something different to spice things up or the next thousand years or so are gonna get very boring quick!”

And hopefully she won’t feel so out of place if Michael truly intends to keep her there.

He regards her, thoughtfully; “Are you saying my design was boring?”

“No! Not…not exactly, I mean…” Damn it, she’s trying hard not to sound like a jerk; “You did a good job designing what all those perfect do-gooders wanted, and a lot of it was really pretty and…nice. But it’s kinda like the frozen yoghurt thing, if you just have perfect ice cream, your mouth gets too cold and it loses its flavor, but if you take it and ruin it a little, you keep wanting more and…I dunno, this metaphor got away from me but…C’mon.”

She takes his hand in hers and squeezes it.

“You gotta admit. I’ve seen you have way more fun doing all this stuff with me than you did trying to keep that place squeaky clean. I mean, take out the chaos sequence and the sink hole and Janet’s murder and my big reveal…You don’t think you would’ve been a little bit bored with what was left?”

Michael tries to conceal a smile as he looks down at their hands.

“Fork…How do you know me so well? You can’t read auras…can you?” He seems to truly consider the possibility.

“No, but we’ve spent most of the past six months together and that’s more than enough for me to see that you’re not just some OCD angel boss.” She smiles, reaching to poke him in his shirt; “The Michael I’ve been living with all this time is more of a…great big kid who literally just wants to live a little, trying everything you can without all that work getting you down…I just don’t want that to end when I’m ready to go back. I like being here…because I like seeing you liking being here.”

He raises his hands to cup her face, giving her a heartfelt smile as he stares down into her eyes, before pulling her in close.

There’s the briefest of frets, a tiny morsel of worry and hope, that he’s about to plant those lips somewhere else before they land on top of her head.

Oh. Obviously.

_Stop thinking about…Stop **hoping** for more._

She reaches to hold his hands there.

_You should have known this wasn’t your heaven when the god-like version of your childhood crush didn’t immediately beckon you to hump him on your first meeting._

Never mind that, she’s had more than enough of being forked by an immortal being. Michael is the opposite of that. Michael is safe. He’s…’innocent’, in everything except cheating at MarioKart.

Besides…if he knew the kinds of thoughts that went through her head…

Wait.

Her packet of crackers falls from her pocket, which is quickly scooped up in the paw of a passing monkey with the bushiest tail she’s ever seen.

“Hey!” She calls, letting go of Michael’s hands and stepping aside; “You little thief.”

The monkey ignores her, tearing open the wrapping and shoving all the food into its mouth, its tail slapping her hand away when she brings it close.

“Careful. That might be a relative of yours.”

“Really? Wow, so the creationists were right, we did live with dinosaurs!” She exclaims before catching Michael’s smirk; “Oh, you’re messing with me again.”

“Well you do all share a common ancestor. Her name was Beth, not many humans know that.” He shows off again.

Eleanor moves over to try to pick up one of the crackers on the ground, offering it out.

“C’mon then, Beth Jr, be the first pre-human to make some s’mores.”

The monkey scarpers back in fright when Eleanor steps forward a little too fast, stepping on its tail. The small creature recoils, screeching and trembling, curling itself inward protectively.

Eleanor freezes up.

_The bones in her hand shatter as his foot lands on top with a powerful crunch._

_“You wait until I decide to feed you, bitch. Just for that, I think you can go another week without food. Don’t worry though, you’ll still get to taste my meat daily. Now sit and watch me finish.”_

_He kicks her back down again until she’s curled up beside his chair, holding her twisted hand to her front. She doesn’t know what possessed her to try to grab the single pea that had rolled off his plate. She’s just so fucking hungry, it was as if her brain allowed her stomach to take control…_

_Stupid bitch. Stupid animal._

Michael’s hands are firmly on her arms as she shudders, flashing back to her bright surroundings. But the simulation somehow feels a lot less lifelike. All she knows to be real is the angel holding her.

“Enough for today?” He asks.

She nods, closing her eyes, feeling her hand to check its all in one piece.

“Probably a good idea we don’t overuse this one, we can space it out when you want. Rhino racing one day and pterodactyl flying the next week. Whatever you want.” He whispers as he strokes her arms.

She hears his fingers snap.

Two hours later, they’re sat on the sofa with a blanket over their laps as they watch Chris Pratt deal with the velociraptors on screen, Eleanor feeling far more relaxed, comfortably settled in the crook of Michael’s armpit.

She didn’t want to talk about what triggered her ‘turn’ when they returned to the beach house, just wanting to get out of her t-shirt and shorts and into a hot bath. She’d scrubbed her skin until it turned a darker shade of pink, wanting to scrape away the shell of the creature that forking demon had almost broken her into becoming.

Michael had offered to help her, noticing how light-headed she was, so she’d waited until she had her balance back under control, letting him rub her back until the world stopped spinning. He’s seen her naked before dozens of times, he’s washed her as intimately and chaste as anyone in her life had, but suddenly that didn’t seem like the most sensible of ideas.

_He’s practically God here. You’re a filthy mortal being._

_If he knew the sick things you sometimes wish he’d do to you, he’d call for a train immediately._

Laying in the water with her eyes closed, she’d done her best to silence the voice, while also blocking out those indulgent fantasies she often found herself stumbling into. Michael’s hands her waist. Michael taking her dress off. Michael’s lips on her neck. Michael using those magical fingers and extra sense of his in all the right places until she screamed for all of Heaven and Hell to hear…

Fork. What is wrong with you, Shellstrop?

She’d made sure to wash her hair with cold water before she could dare to touch herself.

When she’d emerged after drying her hair and in Michael’s white shirt as her night-dress and a pair of leggings and slippers, he’d been a little surprised at her choice of film. She was determined not to let that deckhead put her off something else she enjoyed.

“Man, I swear the effects in the first one still look more like the real thing.” She comments, not worried about flashbacks bringing her down so long as she has Michael’s arm around her.

“It wasn’t technically the real thing but I appreciate I was able to make you think that.”

“Hmm. You have your uses.” She rolls her head to smile at him.

Many uses, she wouldn’t deny. More than she has any right to be privileged to.

She slides her hand over to his rested on his knee and slips her fingers between his.

“Sorry I ruined-.”

“Hey,” Michael gives her a quick squeeze; “What’ve I said about the word sorry being banned from this house?”

“You said it was my house so my rules. But fine,” She murmurs, sighing, “I just hate it when my freak outs ruin our fun.”

“I didn’t remember anything in your file about you having a fear of monkeys.”

“It wasn’t the dumb monkey. It was…” She’s not sure how to explain it; “Is that how we look to you?”

Michael waves his hand up to pause the film before turning to her.

“What?”

“I mean…You keep saying you’ve been around for billions of years. You’ve seen all these creatures, big and small, come and go on the Earth and other planets. You hang out with these other all-knowing angel dudes.” Eleanor says, “I guess humans don’t seem that much different from those monkeys, right? Little, short-lived, hungry mammals looking to get laid…Sounds a lot like me, right?”

Michael stares at her.

“Yeah, kinda,” He says, bluntly; “At least, on paper. But you’re more than just a file, Eleanor. You said you’ve been with me long enough to know what I’m really like, well…I know there’s more to you than just sex and food. Like the fact that you’re a huge fantasy nerd with a secret love of dinosaurs.”

“That’s not a secret – who doesn’t love dinosaurs?!” Idiots, that’s who!

“My point is, you’re more than just a talkative, pretty ape.” He says, making her blush at the ‘pretty’ part as she wasn’t expecting that; “All you humans are so interesting, why do you think you’re my favorite species? I’ve been around for all of time, Eleanor, and I have never seen a creature, mortal or otherwise, so fascinating and creative and stupidly brave as humanity. You’re the prime example of that.”

He pulls her hand up to his mouth, giving her knuckles a light kiss.

She’s not too sure about what he says but she doesn’t have the strength to argue. She’s just relieved when she doesn’t hear Trevor’s voice in her head objecting to those words.

But, damn it, does he have to be so sweet? It makes it harder not to stare at those lips of his.

“Don’t suppose you’d mind summoning some pizza for your ‘prime human’, huh bud?” She leans against his chest, needing something to fill a hole if Michael is off the table for filling the other one.

*

Gluttony might be a sin. Or rather, a major points loss.

But worrying about such things seemed more forgivable when you’re dating a demon, rather than an angel. That had felt delightfully ‘naughty’ too, once they’d given into their mutual urges after so long keeping their libidos in check, Michael probably not even aware he had one until Eleanor woke it up. It was different now. Their moments together felt far more honest now they both knew who each other really was. They felt more real than the dinosaurs she’d ridden in those simulations.

To think that for all those months she had berated herself for fantasising about screwing a caring, innocent angel, when that angel never even existed. And, what seemed only hilarious now, he was hiding the exact same guilt over wanting to fork a human he was supposed to torture. At least with the truth out, the squid now out of the bag as it were, they don’t have to be afraid of their own desires anymore.

She’d once been forced to crawl on hands and knees, to eat table scraps that had fallen on the floor, to wait to be given what she needed. Never again. Now, when she wants food, she asks for it and takes it with the help of Janet or Michael or the demon Sandra pretending to be a café waitress having to put on a fake smile for the human who already knows their game. She knows she’ll never have to beg for anything again.

The same is true for something else that had once been denied from her unless it involved pain.

She enters Michael’s office one night, after checking the coast is clear, finding him sat reading Chidi’s latest material. He looks up, pleasantly surprised, when she enters, eyes scanning over the dress she picked out to come ‘visit’ him.

“Hey, perfect. Surprise study group?” He asks.

She shakes her head, walking over and plucking the book from his hands, which is usually his move.

“Not tonight, my almost-reformed demon.” Eleanor says, sliding onto his lap, moving her legs either side to straddle him; “Teacher’s been giving us good grades recently so…I think we’re due a break, don’t you agree?”

His eyes light up, hands moving to her sides, as he looks up at her.

“Oh…definitely. What were you thinking?”

She’s already answering his question by undoing his bow-tie, slipping it off and dropping it to the floor.

“First, you better shut those windows and make sure we’re locked up all secure to keep those nosy employees of yours out.” Eleanor whispers, excited fingers working on the buttons of his shirt; “And then how about a bucket of fried shrimp on the desk for your favorite monkey?”

Michael gives her a chuckle, nuzzling his nose against her cheek, his hand moving off to snap the food at her request before he goes back to feeling her skin through the thin cotton.

“Hungry then, I take it?”

Eleanor leans down to suck his bottom lip, feeling him already rise to press against her leg, clearly matching her mood.

“Forking starving.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I missed these two.


	9. Waking Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When dreams became a form of torture in the Bad Place, they continue to haunt Eleanor long after she left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is something I've been slowly working on for a while inspired by many different whump prompts on Tumblr. I didn't keep track of all of them but most were probably from whumpster-dumpster.tumblr.com. 
> 
> I know one of the main ones, which I can no longer find the post for, was something like: "Whumpee gets lost in a crowd after they think they see Whumper and Caretaker panics as they look for them." Anyway, it's just another little slice of NPL life for these two, with a touch of UST at the end. I just really wanted to finish it as it kept getting longer than I meant it to.

_You’ve been doing so well lately. I think you deserve a treat._

_-_

No drink tops a margarita. She’s been hooked ever since her mom asked her to act as a taste tester for a batch she was preparing herself. Best sixth birthday party ever. Eleanor hums in contentment as it slides down her throat, welcoming the blissful fuzz to envelop her brain after what she’s been through.

-

_All ready now. Just close your eyes._

_-_

The rest of the table erupts in laughter as Tahani recalls some funny event that happened when she went to Elton John’s wedding anniversary. She laughs, even though she was too distracted by having a cheeky glance at the hot socialite’s cleavage as she’d leaned forward while telling her story. Hey, it’s been a while since she had this much human contact, there are many perks of being around her friends that she’s missed, as well as having her favorite drink!  
  
Once she’s had enough of imagining the feel of those boobs against her face, her focus is stolen by a hand clasping over her own.

-

_Ah. There we go._

_-_

Chidi smiles, his fingers linking with her own.

“I’m so glad you’re back. I’m not letting you leave again.” He tells her with the sting of pained regret in each word. She could grab that face of his and kiss him until his glasses slipped up and off.

Instead, she settles for returning his smile.

“Good thing I don’t plan on going away.” Not after all it took to get back. She can put all that messy business behind her. Pretend it never happened.

“Great. Because you’ve got a lot of lessons to catch up on!”

She groans, “Seriously, dude? You’re immediately giving me homework? I might as well still be in Hell!”

Of course, she’s joking. His grin tells her that he knows that and it makes him look quite cute.

Now she’s ready to try for a kiss.

And she may have gone through with it, if not for the sudden ‘clink, clink, clink’ noise ringing through the conversations at the dinner table.

They all turn their heads in direction of the one suddenly on his feet, preparing to make a toast.

“I think it’s safe to say that none of us would like to experience the Good Place without you here again, Eleanor.” Michael announces, to which her friends and several other faces she’s less close to from town nod in agreement; “It was almost as if another sink hole had opened up, only this time in our hearts…Metaphorically speaking that is. If any of you do experience something like that literally, please alert Janet.”

She laughs, hoping that he’s joking, though the others don’t look quite so convinced. It really is hard to tell with Michael. At first glance, she thought he was nothing but serious, some quirky wise paragon of goodness put in charge of this place. It wasn’t until that day they had spent together she had seen there was something of a mischievous imp hiding beneath that old angel mask. She wishes she had got to know that side of him more before everything turned to crab…Maybe now she will.

Now he wants her back.

“You belong here, Eleanor. You’re part of our team.” He tells her, sincerely, peering at her adoringly from behind those specs. What is it with her suddenly surrounding herself with dudes in glasses becoming attached to her lately?

She won’t complain. There was once a time she had never wanted to be part of any team. Always the lone wolf, too cool for any crows, never wanting to make the effort to fit in with anyone. It’s different now. She… _likes_ the people around her (and a couple of not-people including Michael and Janet). They want her to stay and, sure as fork, she wants to stay here too.

The threat of what awaits her if she didn’t stay is also a rather big incentive. She now knows that more than ever.

It’s worth listening to Tahani’s namedropping stories. It’s worth doing her own laundry instead of ‘tricking’ Chidi. It’s worth keeping Juan-yu or Jason’s secret as he kept hers. It’s worth staying in line to save Michael from the worst retirement plan ever. She sees the smiles of her…friends around her. The ones she never wanted but have needed for so long. There’s a warmth in her chest she’s never felt before, except in the most fleeting of moments during her life, during cute moments with Julie at the shopping mall or with the sweeter boyfriends who didn’t try to steal her car.

She can’t stop smiling back at them. Fork, since when did this become a cheesy Lifetime movie?

Eleanor takes another swig of her margarita…When did it become full again? Did Janet top it up without her having to ask? This place really is Heaven.

“What are you doing?”

She turns to Chidi, his sharp question cutting through like a knife.

Crab. Should she have waited for Michael to finish his toast before drinking?

“My bad, I-.”

A slap strikes her cheek. Her glass shatters on the floor after slipping from her fingers. The laughter stops entirely.

What the fork?! Chidi would never! Not in a million…

She turns her head, slowly, back, to see someone else sitting having stolen his chair.

Two hateful eyes glare at her from a young, white face; “What the _fuck_ do you think you’re doing?!”

Her heart starts to throw itself against her ribs. It can’t be. Not yet.

“I…I don’t…”

Another slap. This one makes her land, face down, in the plate of food on her table that’s suddenly gone cold. Gravy drips from her hair as she pushes herself up. She looks up, for her friends, only to find empty chairs all around the table.

Come back! Fucking come back, they can’t leave now she’s finally accepted she needs them, damn it! That’s not fucking fair!

 _Michael_ …Damn it, Michael said she belonged. Michael said she wouldn’t have to go back-!  
  
“AAAH!”

A pair of sharp metal spears are prodded between her shoulder blades, sending a surge of electricity throughout her body. She screams as the last few images of the food and the drinks and the table vanish along with everything else her exhausted, delirious brain had come up with in the brief moment she had been permitted to rest. Between the white flashes and black spots that distort her vision while her body convulses from the shocks, she sees her true surroundings.

The blood-caked stone. The cable ties hanging from the low ceiling. One flickering lightbulb that adds to her constant headache.

The demon leaning over her, poking her with the supercharged cattle prod. Or, rather, human prod.

She recoils at the look on Trevor’s face. She hasn’t seen him so angry since…since…

“That’s the thanks I get for letting you sleep?! You start dreaming of being somewhere else?!” He snarls, viciously, jabbing her again and making her shriek; “Ungrateful fucking cow!”

That’s not fair! She didn’t plan to! She didn’t have a choice where her subconscious chose to escape to!

It’s the first opportunity she’s had to dream since coming here. A reward for being…’good’.

_For doing as you’re told. He’s breaking you, Shellstrop._

No! No, she’s not broken, not yet, she won’t ever…Damn it, she just wanted the chance to sleep, just for a moment. Even if it meant nightmares, even if it meant guzzling demon jizz for hours, it was worth it just to rest for a little while. If she’d known the risk of dreaming something nice, of dreaming of freedom and being happy again, meant this, then…

Trevor thrusts the poker into the base of her spine.

“You’re never gonna sleep again, you hear. You can’t be trusted. Stupid slut.” He hisses as she writhes and screams her lungs out; “You’re mine, dumb dumb. I can’t risk having you forget that, not for a moment, and you’ve shown you can’t be loyal. But you will. I will crack that stubborn skull of yours and mould your brain like play-dough…And don’t think I’m being poetic, pet. Demons don’t do poems unless they’re limericks.”

When he’s finished electrocuting her, smoke wafting off her paralysed body, he crawls over her, grabbing the back of her hair, his lips to her ear.

“How about this one _? There once was a whore from Arizona_ ,” He croons, his feet kicking her legs apart; “ _Who refused to do what they told her. She went down to Hell, got fucked in a cell, and never left again because no one wanted her_ …That’s how limericks work, right? Or am I thinking of haikus? Remind me to ask the next poet I gotta torture.”

He knows she can’t remind him. He took her tongue, just as he numbed her nerves. There’s no screaming and no moving through what comes next. All she can do is stare at the wall, silent as a doll.

*

It’s a stroke of luck that he didn’t step on her. What on Io is she doing down there?

Michael swiftly shuts his office door behind him, making sure to hear the click of the automatic lock. The two hours of paperwork he’s been doing tonight might be unreadable to her, but the notes he’s recorded on tape are the last thing he needs the human to hear. Especially when it’s finally started to seem like he’s making some kind of progress with her lately.

She’s started moving more on her own, sometimes even without him prompting her. It’s a relief that she can feed herself now. This is a bit of surprise, however, finding her curled up on the floor outside his office door at three in the morning.

“Eleanor…” He says, softly; “What’s wrong?”

It’s easy to see she’s not asleep, given her short breathing and trembling. Her usual state when she’s woken up from a nightmare. And at breakfast. And after her afternoon nap. And when she’s in the bath. Moments of seeing her appear truly rested and peaceful are so few and far between, he feels as though he’s grasping at them like butterflies.

Michael kneels down next to her.

“Were you waiting for me? I was about to come and check on you.” He tells her, “You haven’t been here long, have you?”

He doesn’t expect an answer. It doesn’t mean he won’t talk as if she has the option to.

Her curled fist is hiding her face from him, every inch of her tense and wound up. He puts his hand to hers, gently pulling it away, seeing that her eyes are open wide, staring out, terrified, into the space past Michael’s legs. Even in all these weeks, he’s never seen her look so haunted. Shook, as she would say.

Michael makes an effort to turn his head, seeing only the empty, dimly lit living room down the hall.

“There’s nothing there, Eleanor.” he moves his hand over her hair; “I can see in more dimensions than you, remember, and even I can let you know there’s nothing there.”

She hasn’t even shown any signs of noticing that he’s there.

It could be another form of night terror, he wonders. The book did say the human might walk around, or crawl in her case, or pull things off the wall. It didn’t seem to have been a symptom of Eleanor’s bad nights so far, they mainly consisted of thrashing and screaming in her bed for hours on end, until the inevitable tearful meltdown.

He strokes her cheek with his thumb; “Eleanor? Can you hear me? It’s Michael. Just me and you here, I promise.”

No reaction. Not even a whimper.

He contemplates picking her up like he usually would. But he’s sure he remembers something about that not being the best idea to force her to move when she’s in this state. So many little things he has to do to try his patience lately. A good thing he has a magical assistant that gives him as much time as he needs.

Still. He can’t keep this up forever. He’s gonna go insane having to revolve his life around seeing to this human’s needs. It doesn’t matter if she’s the least gross human he’s met. Who gives a fork if she’s in state because of his fork up. He’s dedicated to his job, that’s all it is.

“Looks like we’ll be camping here then.”

He gets up and goes over to the living room, curious if his absence will earn the tiniest mewl from Eleanor from the fear of him leaving. Zip, nada. She’s not even here as far as she’s aware. His fist clenches for the briefest moment at the thought that, mentally, Trevor still has her in that cell, that she still belongs to that twerp. He doesn’t even have to try anymore, the thief.

Never mind, Mikey. She’s back where she belongs now.

He grabs a few pillows from the living room sofa and brings them back to Eleanor’s spot. Kneeling down, he carefully puts one under her head, another tucked behind her in case she rolls over, before laying down on his own. He faces her, blocking off her view to the space where she’s still seeing the ghosts plaguing her broken head. Once it passes, when she starts to wake, the first thing she’s going to see is him. The face of the hero who rescued her from that place.

It’s not the comfiest of spots, not when he’d planned to chill on the couch after checking in on her, but hopefully this is a one-off he’ll have to endure for this job on top of everything else.

Very slowly, he moves his hand up towards hers, fingers cautiously lacing through, trying his best to still them. To reach some tiny part of her to let her know that he’s there. A small squeeze of her fingers cradled in the space between them.

His own eyes close, not expecting slumber, just so he doesn’t look like a creep staring at her while she sleeps. Michael can admit to being many things; torturer, maimer, schemer, liar, spawn of Hell, the works. But he’s not… _Him_. He doesn’t need eyesight to know when Eleanor will ‘wake’ from this web of ghosts she’s trapped in.

-

No! No, he’s found her! He’s got her!

How stupid could she be? She’s known for too long now, there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. She can crawl as fast as she can, tuck herself into the tiniest corner, hold her breath and not make a peep. It doesn’t make any difference. His hand will always wrap itself around her ankle. She’ll always be dragged out, nails digging into the floor, griding down to the skin as she screams.

She’d waken up in her new…No, not cell, _bedroom_. Apparently. Too many shadows, too many dark shapes, despite the glow of the stars and the moon from her window. She’d woken up to his laughter ringing in her ears. No matter how hard she tried to shield herself beneath her duvet and block it out, hands on her ears, it only got louder. Hungrier. He was coming. He was there.

Opening her mouth to cry out, make the most pathetic shrill sound that usually summoned her protector, no sound had left, her throat too dry and tight. The glass that had been left for her lay on the floor, quenching the carpet, when she probably wacked it during her earlier thrashing.

A terrifying idea had gripped her brain as she lay there, parched and gasping. What if Michael wasn’t going to come? What if he’d left her there and gone back to the town because he was sick of her?

He…He wouldn’t…Would he?

Fork, how exactly could she blame him if he did? She was downright sick of herself. The Eleanor she was before all of this would have abandoned a pathetic mess like her weeks ago.

She had to know. She couldn’t just lie there and wait.

It was the greatest of risks, making sure to time herself just right, knowing that if He was there then He was waiting for her to slip up. She’d counted, one, two…three…Go!

Throwing herself out of bed, she’d nearly dragged the sheets off with her, before she kicked the tangle from her feet as she hit the floor and crawled as quick as she could out of the room. In the back of her skull, she heard his shoes click after her, his manic cackles at how ridiculous she must look. Better to look stupid than have her tongue cut out again, never mind if she still hadn’t dared to use it. The one remaining spark Trevor failed to snuff out is all that drives her to do more than just sit and rock herself in a corner these days.

Once she’d reached Michael’s closed office door, the fire had died, unused knees feeling overwhelmed already at having to move so fast. She’d knelt outside Michael’s door for what felt like hours, wishing she could will herself to knock….or, damn it, just open it without a care like once upon a time. She’d clenched her hands over her hair and rolled forward, feeling the shadows slither and coil around her, the laughter cutting its way through her frantic thoughts.

Her whimpering was still too quiet.

_Please. Michael. Help. Open up, please. Help me. I need you._

The longer the door had remained closed and boring, towering over her, the greater the fear of him having left her for good had risen up. She didn’t want to go back to sleep. Sleep was awful. She’d begged for sleep for so long and then finally, when it was given back to her, it just meant returning to the Bad Place. It meant reliving it all, only with the added bonus of her imagination merging different tortures and faces together, forking her up and making her more anxious than ever.

Michael didn’t sleep. Maybe he could teach her how? Please. Never again.

She’d tried her best to fight the overwhelming exhaustion. A battle of wits against her own brain telling her to rest while the army of ghosts swarmed in. Somehow, eventually, she’d managed to keep herself awake…but the monsters still found her. Manifesting thick and heavy before her. The cackles and taunting buzzing like wasps against her eardrums. It was worse than the nightmares. She was paralysed. She couldn’t wake because she wasn’t asleep. It felt too real, caught in a stretched-out moment where she was waiting for Trevor to pounce on her.

Then she felt the hand on her own. And she was ready to accept defeat…

That was until she felt the stroke of a warm thumb against the joint of her own. A soft squeeze.

Eleanor blinked. The mish-mash of blood and shadows and sordid smiles parted until she saw him there, lying beside her, her hand held safe in his own.

A mewl escaped her parted, dry lips. _Michael…_

One blue eye opened before her, followed by a smile, then the other eye.

“There you are.” He whispers, giving her hand another squeeze; “I was starting to think you weren’t gonna wake up.”

Wake up? When did she go to sleep? She doesn’t feel rested, at all. Her eyeballs ache beneath the lids, a sore fuzz hovering in her forehead. She feels…cold. Fork, when did it get so cold?

She looks at Michael beside her…What is he doing on the floor with her? He shouldn’t be literally lowering himself to her level. Insect. Rat. Whore.

_That’s my bitch. Remember what you are._

Damnit, the voice is thick and course as ever, even with the images fading. She clings on tighter to Michael’s hand, almost about to curl into his front and hide for as long as he’ll let her, before she hears the mocking Not-Chidi voice from her nightmare earlier.

W _hat the FUCK do you think you’re doing?!_

Her hand pulls out and she sits up, shuffling back with her palms sliding on the hardwoord floor. Shouldn’t get Michael dirty! Shouldn’t be bothering him! Shouldn’t be making him regret coming to get her! Why won’t she learn?! Her hands pull at her hair. It usually gets ripped out when it grows back this long. Why does she have to be such a dumb little shirt?!

“Eleanor…”

Just leave her, she cries, pulling her knees up to her chin. Just throw her out already, just get it over-

“Eleanor!”

Her body rocks back and forth, wishing she could throw off the feel of the claw-like fingers sneaking their way around her neck, her hips, tightening around her wrists and ankles. They’re going to pull her apart from all sides until she’s torn, limb from limb, and there’s nothing she can do to stop it. Her scalp burns as she tugs harder. It’s all she can control. All she’s allowed.

“WILL YOU STOP THAT, ELEANOR!”

Michael’s voice, sharp and furious, stomps on all the others like an army boot. Eleanor freezes. Her fingers let go.

Oh…fork. Now she’s done it.

Now she’s pushed him too hard. Nice going, ding-dong. Even angels have their limits. It’s only the second time she’s heard him raise his voice in that tone.

_Dumb little human!_

True that.

“Put your hands down!” He orders next and they fall in submission to the floor. She dare not look up to see how pissed he must be; “…Good.”

Good? Isn’t there more? She waits with bone dry breath rasping from her mouth.

“…Oh, shirt, I did it again. Fork’s sake, Michael!” She hears him mutter and she frowns. What does he mean?

Why is he getting up? Where is he going now? Is he gonna…get something to hit her with? Trevor loved all the ‘toys’ he used to bring in when he visited her. He always made her choose which one…and if she tried to pick the one that looked the least painful, he would modify it so it was worse than the others. It’s amazing how razor wire seems to fit around everything.

She senses him return, kneeling down again, something in his hand…Holding it to her…

“Drink up. Slow and steady.” Another command. Softer now.

What is happening?

“It’s just water, Eleanor, it won’t hurt. Come on. Both hands, you can do this.”

Her hands shake terribly with the rest of her body as she does as she’s told, reaching out and accepting the tall glass in between her palms, careful not to spill this like the other one. He’s going to be even more mad when he sees that.

As she brings it to her lips, she relishes the cool liquid sliding down her throat, feeling almost orgasmic from the relief. How forking lame is that.

The next thing she knows, the patchwork quilt is being cast around her shoulders and Michael is wrapping it around her, his hands moving to her back. His palm works in circles as he starts to shush her. Where did the anger go? Was it another hallucination? How is she supposed to know what is real anymore?

The water…that feels real. She takes another sip. Michael’s hand massaging between her shoulder blades feels very real. And nice.

“There we go. Deep breaths now. Try not to think about anything else, okay? Just focus on what we got here, me and you, nothing else. Just the water and your breathing. Do that for me. Please.”

It’s…not quite an order. It’s a request? That feels too different and yet…she does as she’s told.

Her chest feels so tight. It’s like when he used to press on her ribs with his foot until they cracked. How is she supposed to breath when…Her eyes blink open. She’s not on the ground, she’s sitting up. Michael is there. Michael’s close and…his fingers are pushing against all the right spots in the muscles on her back. She leans against his touch, finding it helps her to slow her breathing back while her hands clutch the glass.

“Shhh, very good. Much better, huh.” Michael whispers, followed by many more soothing words, most of them floating over Eleanor’s head. All she clings to is the tone, not so much the meanings.

Her panic-induced adrenaline fades out with each breath. Luckily, Michael notices her fingers go slack as he catches the glass, putting it to one side. He shuffles forward and tries to guide her into his arms. Eleanor pretty much collapses forward, letting him cocoon her in the quilt as he holds her.

“Can you still see anything, Eleanor? Do you think there’s anyone else here?” He asks, resting his chin on her head.

Her face is buried in his shirt. It’s safe there. She doesn’t want to leave. It takes five minutes of psyching herself up until she dares to peek out, just for a moment, unable to see any shadows. The laughter is there but it’s so faint, as if in another house. Maybe he just got scared off when Michael came out…Maybe he’s waiting for the right time to come back…

She faceplants back into Michael’s shirt, catching the scent of his caramel antimatter.

“I can have Janet run a scan if you like. But I promise you…there’s no one around for about eight hundred miles, all the way across the forests, over the mountains, through the valleys and lakes and right back to the town. And there’s not a single demon there or anyone who could hurt you.” He tells her, “Not even in all the extra dimensions I can see that you can’t. And no one can bring a train here unless Janet lets them and I would never let that happen, okay?”

Okay? Fork. She’d give anything for it to be that easy. Just trust the nice angel. Just be good and listen for once in your filthy existence. Why is it so easy to listen to the bad voices but not Michael?

A sob breaks out as she trembles, the dam breaking, tears falling fast.

Michael’s arms tighten; “You’ve just not been sleeping great lately and I think all those nightmares in your head are spilling out into reality…And yes, that is the scientific explanation. They’re not real, Eleanor…Next time this happens and I’m not around, you knock on my door, got it? It doesn’t matter if I’m working. You’re my priority. I literally moved Heaven for you, remember? So long as we’re here, together, you’re always gonna come first.”

Her shaking subsides, warmed through beneath the quilt and his weirdly hot arms.

“I’m never gonna be mad at you for needing my help. That’s what I’m here for, dummy.” The insult would be one to make her flinch, usually, but the soft, teasing tone is clear as day. She is a dummy. So scared of a forking door and a dorky, sweet angel.

She stays curled on his lap for another few minutes before Michael gently moves her over to the couch, keeping her wrapped up.

“Wanna go back to bed?”

She shakes her head. Yes, she’s exhausted….But one reassuring comedown session isn’t going to be enough to sort her freaky noodle out, not for tonight. Her fingers keep a hold on Michael’s shirt. If he plans to dump her back in bed, she’s gonna start ripping stuff.

“Yeah, didn’t think so.” He concedes, settling in the corner of the couch and letting her lay against him; “I think we’ve watched enough TV lately, that can’t be helping much…We could try reading something?”

Judging by his snort, he must have seen her nose wrinkle up.

“Don’t worry, you won’t be getting philosophy books from me.” He tells her, reaching to his side for something from the side-table; “How about if I just grab your favorite story from the last few years…Let’s see…Ah.”

He opens a thick, familiar paperback in his lap.

“‘ _Take That Back, Bench – A Collective Diary of the Real Housewives of Atlanta’.”_ He reads, enthusiasm deflating with each syllable. He glances at her; “On second thought, you sure you don’t wanna check out that Westworld show?”

The smallest of smiles tugs at her lips.

Eleanor shakes her head. No, no…This she’s interested to hear. It’s one thing to read it herself several times, it’s another to listen to Michael try to read it aloud, which he’s gonna.

The Architect sighs; “Fine. Settle in.” He helps her scooch in closer, moving his legs up and shifting so she can snuggle down between his chest and the back of the couch; “Let’s see here…. _It all started on NeeNee’s birthday. Someone called to say the cake would be late because the delivery driver had a stroke and so she was pissed and giving everyone the stink eye. It was only lunchtime but we’d all had about three vodka tonics and Sheree was making moves on the pool boy…_ ” He takes a breath; “Please tell me there’s some car chases soon or I think I’m gonna transfer to dog heaven.”

Eleanor gives a small hum against him, already feeling her eyelids get heavy again. Her arm slides over Michael’s stomach as she continues to make him read her favorite trash.

She no longer hears the laughter.

*

_“When NeeNee found her man’s boxers in Kim’s bed, she turned redder than the red part of the American flag. ‘You basic slut!’ she hollered; ‘I helped you get your backstreet nose job and this is how you repay me!?’”_

Three hours later, Michael is so engrossed in the book that he’s failed to notice that Eleanor has been asleep in the crook of his arm for the past twelve chapters. No wonder she likes this so much! Everyone is so amazingly awful! He wouldn’t dare to tell her that, according to these women’s real files, most of what are in these journals is pure fiction – but it’s delicious fiction all the same. It’s like reading about a whole house of Eleanor Shellstrops. Why does that image make him feel…weird?

Besides, not even their hyperreal versions have anything on the real one. She’s far smarter, and far trashier, than they could hope to be. They should be the ones idolising her.

Though it would be hard to recognise that with how she is now. In the future, hopefully.

“Wow, I can’t believe Kim would do that! I thought she crossed the line with planting her stash on Shiree’s husband.” Michael interrupts his reading for the odd commentary.

He looks down to see Eleanor’s eyes closed. Her breathing has evened out. Hand limp over his shirt. Dead to the world…more than usual.

Pretty rude of her to pass out when he’s not finished reading. He supposes she already knows what’s happening but, all the same, he doesn’t feel like reading on without her paying attention. Not when he might need to bring it out for her next bad night.

At least she’s asleep. These simple primates are easy enough to calm once you know how.

Water, oxygen, soft words, muscle pressure, reassurances of things they should already know but their tiny brains can’t seem to grasp (especially when they’re so heavily scarred). Michael’s becoming something of a pro these past few weeks, he feels. There’s something telling about the way Eleanor came to find him, how she waited outside his door, how she keeps hanging onto him like a koala. If that’s not a sign of trust being earned, then what is? All this caretaker crab is really starting to pay off. He even gets the odd smile from her. If he had a heart, it would cause it to soar whenever he sees it.

He hadn’t meant to snap again. He so rarely lost his temper with her, aware how fragile she is, how the slightest show of anger is only going to remind her of what he saved her from. It had been a blip of serendipity, considering it at least caused her to obey…just enough to get her to stop hurting herself rather than him having to pin her down. It would be easier to try to be more authoritative. Be a ‘kind’ immortal owner who tells her what to do for her own good. Fork…no. The last thing Eleanor was, the _real Eleanor_ , is submissive.

Not long now. He’ll try to encourage her to walk tomorrow, just a couple of steps at a time, maybe practice speaking some words while they’re at it. She’s doing so well, no matter how small the steps are, considering how shattered her feet were when he found her. Of course, any pride he feels is purely in his own hard work.

One more chapter, he thinks, as a reward for himself. He won’t both putting her back to bed when dawn is already starting to break at the window.

He continues to read about the Housewives attempted bank heist which Bravo allegedly refused to film, absent minded of his fingers trailing through Eleanor’s hair.

* * *

“Your turn….That one!” She points to a couple near the waves.

“Uhh,” Michael takes a moment to ponder; “Guy is stealing money from work, she’s the babysitter he’s having an affair with but she’s only into his money, his wife is too dumb to realise they don’t even have kids.”

Eleanor chuckles, leaning her head back against Michael’s side as they lay on the towels they’ve criss-crossed together. He’s propping himself up on his elbows while she uses his torso as a pillow as he so generously (not) offered. Around them are countless figures wandering around their beach, men and women of all sorts in their summer outfits, chatting among themselves as they go about their day.

They almost seem real. That is the point. Almost.

“Okay, your go.” Michael clicks his tongue, “Err…the two women over there.”

“Oh, easy! They claim to be fighting over the fact the blond one has the hots for the red headed girl’s brother, but doesn’t realise blondie is actually into her and this is their whole sexual tension manifesting as an argument. A classic.” She reaches for her margarita.

“Nice.” Michael smirks; “Wow, this is so fun!”

“I know, right? I forgot how much I missed People Watching. I mean I know it must have lost me a ton of points…”

“It’s fine, they’re all simulations so it doesn’t count.” He assures her, laying back down with his hands behind his head.

Eleanor sips her drink and then turns over, laying on her front with her arms folded over Michael’s stomach; “Lemmie guess. Their shame is real? Or their embarrassment, whatever?” She says, finger flicking at one of the buttons on his shirt.

“Probably but they can’t hear or see us anyway.” He says, “Would you like them to? It might be too much to ask Janet to get them to have conversations, but they could look at you or nod or…maybe whistle?”

Surprisingly, she doesn’t miss random strangers checking her out as much as she thought.

“Nah, I’m good. It’s cool just to have the illusion, y’know. Like, don’t get me wrong, I love that we have this place all to ourselves and I don’t have to talk or interact with any uncool people.”

“Aww, thanks.”

Eleanor pokes him, “But sometimes it can be a bit too quiet and empty. This almost feels like we did just go chill at a random beach on Earth, instead of hiding out in the middle of nowhere. And the fact I don’t have to talk to them means I get the best of both worlds. Just so long as they don’t go appearing in the house when I least expect it.”

“I’ll be sure to remember to turn them off when we go inside.” Michael says, head rolling back, reaching up to stroke her hair, his hand moving down to her shoulders.

Oh yeah…Fork, he always seems to know what she wants.

“I didn’t book a massage for today but if you’re offering?” She mumbles, feeling very chilled out rested against her roommate, still full and sated from the burgers they had for lunch.

“You think every time I lay a hand on you, it’s me volunteering a massage. Am I gonna get a turn?” He says, fingers already pressing beneath the base of her neck, making her squirm.

Eleanor hums, her spine already tingling, “I suppose I could try…I’d probably somehow mess up your angel essence under your suit or something.”

“Very unlikely. You’re just reaching for excuses.”

“Look, bud, I’d be more than happy to give you the Shellstrop magic touch, it’s been known to please many a guy but…It might just be a bit too intense for you, y’know.” She flicks at his shirt buttons again; “Besides, it would mean you actually having to take your shirt off on this gorgeous, hot beach, you weirdo.”

It was a big enough achievement just to get him in some khaki shorts and even those reach past his kneecaps.

“Well, it would be nice to be on the receiving end of one. I haven’t done so much running around as we’ve done in the past couple of weeks than I have in centuries!” He tells her with a sigh; “I never thought all these simulated adventures could also be good for exercise.”

“Oh, don’t take the fun outta them, dude!” She groans, even if he is right. They sure did do a lot of running and jumping in all of the simulated fantasies she would request to fill their time. It was exhilarating and freeing, with the joy of doing something as stupid as skydiving without worrying about the consequence of smacking face-first into the ground, or riding on a mother-forking dinosaur.

The only downside being it sure did leave her once neglected joints feeling sore once it came to the day they decided to take it easy and stay in reality.

“But that’s what today is for, right? Just chilling. Not flying dragons or taking me to Jupiter or watching Troll wrestling – still the best one, so far.” She comments, having been very entertained and surprisingly aroused; “We just have a day chilling on our beach with some drinks, judging our fake neighbours and you using those heavenly fingers of yours to make me happy.”

“And the cooking and the laundry?”

“Exactly!” She giggles at him, placing her hands at each side of him so she’s leaning over, barely several inches from his face; “Best roomie ever.”

The angel lets out what almost sounds like a soft growl.

“You always say that when you wanna get me to do something.” He mutters, narrowing his eyes.

“Ain’t my fault it works.”

Definitely a growl this time. Michael pushes himself up, making Eleanor shuffle back as he starts to get up. He leans in close to put his lips to her ear.

“Be grateful you’re cute.” He whispers and she almost swats him before he moves away, making his way towards the beach house; “I’ll be back with the oils and some snacks! You better come up with some more fun stories!”

All too easy. Eleanor smiles as she watches him go, feeling that flutter in her chest that very few men she’s known have managed to make her feel. And far less demons.

Rolling onto her bank, she watches the generated fake-people mull around her, most of them laying on their own non-existent towels while some are laughing in the ocean or walking across the sand, creating an ambience of meaningless chatter that’s enough to make her feel a little less lonely, but not enough to annoy her with conversation she doesn’t care about. She doesn’t need anyone else, for now. She has her angel bud and not-a-robot-and-not-a-girl-friend. And, as she’s constantly reminded, there are friends waiting for her back at home…as soon as she’s ready. All she has to do is say when.

Soon. Maybe.

Tearing her mind away from the inevitable, she tries to focus on the game. There’s the slightest tug in her brain that calls for her to lay down. Close her eyes. Get some-

No. She’s had enough sleep for a lifetime at this forking beach. Now she’s finally out, back on her legs, ready to swim and run as far as she can go without anyone keeping her back. At the snap of a friendly immortal’s hand, she can be transported almost anywhere she wants. Fancy a ringside view of the Womens MMA championship? Snap! Her own private Rhianna concert? Snap! Or just drinks and karaoke at an Arizona dive? Snappy snappy, baby. She barely has time to sleep anymore, constantly buzzing with excitement from the latest simulation and planning out the next one.

Fork, Michael sleeps more than she does, though his eyes don’t usually close until after he thinks she’s drifted off. Such a worrier. Summoning all that magic to bring her fantasies to life must take it out of the poor guy. Now she’s the one who spends more time laying with her eyes open, watching the window or the ceiling or his pretty face.

And some nights, when the silence is too much, when Michael’s snoring isn’t enough white noise to protect her thoughts, she might slip out and watch TV. Or talk to Janet on the patio about people from her old life or random inane questions. Whatever she can think of to fill the time.

Whatever it takes to distract her from the…

Her eyes are on three guys chilling at the waves. One blond. One tall and bald. The other shorter, slimmer, with dark-.

Eleanor tenses.

It…It’s not. It can’t be.

He turns around. His eyes meet hers.

She freezes.

Okay. Fork. Shirt, it’s definitely him.

Is it a coincidence? Hundreds of randomly generated faces, at least one of them might look familiar, sure…But him? Why him? Neither Michael or Janet would ever do that on purpose, she’s sure of…

He smiles.

Oh…Forking Shirtballs, no.

Eleanor turns and looks back towards the beach house. She can barely see it in the distance between all the bodies passing in front of her. Are there more of them than they were before? She never wanted it this crowded. When did they get so loud?

Her head looks back. There’s just as many walking in front of them.

And between each walking figure is – Trevor’s smile stretches – a couple with their arms around each other – Trevor striding closer – some kids getting piggybacks – Trevor raising his hand to wave at her. It’s him. He’s coming.

-

Coconut? She always likes that one. Reminds her of the bra she wore on her thirtieth birthday. And perhaps a surprise he’s had planned for a while; vomit at theme park. He was tempted to apologise to Janet after asking her to bottle that fragrance.

Oh well, if she ends up hating it, it will make for a good prank.

Michael thinks he’s managed to figure out where to draw the line between practical joke and torture by now, though it took some time. It’s only a joke when she laughs with him. A true laugh, not that ‘fake smile through blatant misery’ mask she would wear back in town. He doesn’t want that. Not anymore. Not ye…Not ever.

Seeing her smile and hearing that laugh, after months of screaming and tears, has become his new favorite drug. He wakes up each day with the single motivation to keep her happy. It’s all but erased thinking about his old job. His real job. At first he had convinced himself that it was simply part of his actual work; make the human happy again so that she’s fit to go back and now has somewhere high to fall from when the misery returns.

But now, after all this time, all these days filled with unicorns and dinosaurs and wrestlers, nights at fake bars with dancing and drinks and night swimming in the sparkling ocean before falling asleep with her curled on his chest…Fork, not even he’s as naïve enough to believe that this is simply ‘part of the job’ anymore. Not when he’s constantly finding himself lost in Eleanor’s bright, playful green eyes when she laughs is enough for him to forget, for a few blissful moments, that he’s a demon at all. Not when the feel of her arm linking in with his when they walk together across this little piece of fake-Heaven almost makes him believe he is the angel she thinks he is.

He blocks out what this will mean for the future, going forward. What this will mean for his experiment and how he intends to run it. None of that will matter until Eleanor says she is ready to go back. Until then, he can push all those niggling anxieties to the far corners of his mind and focus on the here and now. Focus on picking out the massage oils that he rub into his human’s soft skin and make her moan, in a good way, not in the ‘stop pulling out my teeth’ way he once knew.

A bottle of lavender too. Hopefully he can trick her into taking a nap for the rest of the day. Does she really think he’s not aware of how little she’s sleeping lately? Sure, he might be sleeping himself more than he’s done in all of time itself. But he does notice things, such as when she’s only resting her eyes instead of falling into her subconscious. How high her adrenaline levels and blood pressure has been since they’ve been doing more of these simulations.

It took a lie about needing to recharge his powers and give Janet a rest just to get this day off. And even that came with the bonus feature of the simulated crowd, but they’re rather low energy consuming.

He’s hardly going to tell her off or try to force her to sleep. If he wanted, he could easily slip something into the food and drink he prepares for her. It would be no more difficult than the calming air he would pump into his foyer when the new humans awoke from their horrific deaths. But he doesn’t. It just…doesn’t seem fair, even if it would be for her own good. She’s struggled so much to get her independence back, he cringes at the idea of taking any of that away from her.

However, he thinks as he gathers the bottles into his arms along with a bag of prawn-flavored chips, if the lavender just happens to make her a bit too relaxed then that’s her choice. Kinda. Gray area.

Passing back through the sliding doors, he makes his way back towards their spot, far out where the tide is still low. After stepping off the bottom of the stone staircase, one of the virtual people immediately jump into him, though he barely flinches. When were there so many? Did Eleanor request more from Janet while he was gone?

As he walks back, he tries to skirt around them rather than passing through each hologram as he easily could do, not wanting to break the illusion if she turns around.

Except…the towels are deserted.

He frowns and tries to glance around. He can’t spot her in the sea. Damn it, he can’t see a thing between all these annoying NPCs!

“Janet!”

“Hi there.” She responds and appears at his side.

“What’s with the crowd getting so big?” He asks her, one family nearly glitching between them.

“Unclear. I suspect it’s to do with how I’ve been tying a lot of my powers to Eleanor’s subconscious lately in order to try to ensure the simulations match her desires.” Janet explains, calmly.

He blinks; “So, wait, she _did_ want more people?”

“Not exactly. I’m sensing a very high level of stress and anxiety from her which is affecting the simulation. I don’t believe she’s intending to create more people, it’s more of a symptom rather than a cause. One of them apparently being I now know what a headache feels like!” She grins widely.

Michael knows the feeling.

“Get rid of them, please, I think we’ve had enough company for one day.”

“Can do!” Janet nods and the people all vanish. The large stretch of sand is back to its serene and isolated state. Ah, much better.

If not for the main concern now more evident than before.

“Now where’s Eleanor?” He had hoped that, much like erasing everyone in a Where’s Waldo except the striped dork himself, would make her stick out immediately. But there’s no one except him, Janet and the towels along with a couple of empty margarita glasses.

His assistant pauses for a second; “Unclear. It seems as though she’s blocking me from pinpointing her location. Almost as if she doesn’t want to be found?”

What the fork? Michael clenches his jaw, panic threatening to bring up his lunch.

He’s not sure why he suddenly feels so nauseous. What does he have to worry about? It’s not as if anyone can hurt her out here. His employees are not even aware of this sector existing, much less able to journey across the mountains to get to them without him or Janet knowing.

But there are plenty of areas Eleanor could get hurt all by herself if she’s not careful enough. Which, if she’s not in the most stable sense of mind, is highly possible.

That shouldn’t be a worry. She’s better now. It’s been weeks since she had a really bad nightmare…Or has it simply been that long since she had a decent nights sleep? Fork it. He’s become far too complacent, assuming Eleanor was more or less recovered when even he’s not so naïve as to think that humans can recover mentally from blood-curdling torture in just a matter of months. Not even a human with as strong and admirable a spirit as Eleanor Shellstrop.

He’s got to find her. He can’t let all the progress so far revert to zero.

He can’t…He _won’t_ lose her.

“It’s fine, I’m sure I can track her.” He tells Janet, his eyes moving to the scurry of footprints in the sand.

*

_I’ve been waaaay more than generous with you, sweet cheeks. Time’s up._

No. No she won’t.

_Aww, how cute! You think you have a choice!_

Shut the fork up! She does! She’s not a prisoner anymore. This is her Good Place. Her beach. She has the freedom to do whatever she wants. She has two immortal friends who are happy to give her whatever she asks for and there’s not a forking thing any dumb demon can do about it! Leave her alone!

_That sounds like a very sweet fairy tale. Just the sorta thing a pathetic little wretch abandoned in a cell for eternity would dream up._

Dream?

No…this isn’t a dream. It can’t be a dream, it’s been going on for too long, it feels so real. Her breathing quickens as she curls her toes in the gravel, sharp little stones digging into the soles of her feet. They feel real. Real enough to hurt. She can still taste the margarita on her tongue.

_Yeah everything sure feels real in a dream, don’t it babe. Time always feels way longer._

_But you know you never left. Why would I ever let a pretty thing like you leave my side? You’re the funnest pet I’ve ever had. You should be flattered. You better be. Ungrateful slut._

Eleanor winces, immediately loathing herself for the reaction. She shouldn’t give a flying fork what he calls her. Her old self… _Herself_ …her real self would have worn that insult like a badge of honor whether it was true or not.

She stumbles forward, the world spinning in a blur of light and noise around her, no longer able to count how many people are around her. None of them real. None of them can help.

 _Nobody wants you._ He sings in her ear, _No one’s gonna save you._

“Eleanor…”

No, no, no.

Too many voices. Too many faces. She came here to be alone, so no one would find her, no one would see what she’s become.

“Eleanor, it’s me. Janet. Can you hear me? Michael’s coming, you just need to-.”

“Leave me alone!” She screams, clutching at her head; “JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!”

 _Bing_.

How is she supposed to know what is real anymore? Because he’s right. This is just the sort of forked up fantasy she used to come up with. A crazy, happy ending where she escaped, where someone saved her, where everything was going to be okay. Only it was even crazier than the other ones. Not even her battered and bruised brain could create a Michael who not only forgave her…but truly cared about her, who learned to cook and take care of her, who made her laugh and kept her safe and made her feel…

The laughter is back. Colder and crueller than ever. She can never run away from it. She’s such a forking idiot!

_True dat. You seriously think a Goody Place dweeb would wanna be friends with you?_

_You think he was starting to…ha…love you or something?! Oh sugar tits…_

Her own face is dancing in front of her. The glassy, hopeless eyes. The sunken cheeks.

_Not even your mama could do that._

Her knees hit the ground, the little stones rubbing into her bare shins before she curls them up to her chest, becoming the smallest ball of a human. Either she is dreaming and all she can do is cling to the fantasy before the torture resumes, or this is real and she’s doomed to be tormented by nightmares forever. Whatever the case, he has her. She’s never getting away.

*

It’s almost sunset by the time he finds her. He hadn’t been expecting her to be able to run so fast, never mind so far on her own. She hates hiking. She can’t stand jogging. The most exercise she does outside of swimming and the occasional running for shirts and giggles, is just a walk across the sand on her own if she needs some space. It’s all too easy for her to get lost when she’s never cared to get to know much of the area beyond their beach.

Thank Upper Management that humans leave a lot of trace marks, from the sand and mud she carried on her feet to the smell of her sweat. Fear. He knows it all too well.

It used to be a popular fragrance pumped out in the Bad Place HQ. Now it makes him feel sick.

She’s crouched in the stream, ankle deep in the shallow water, half a mile into the woods. He can already see the droplets of blood on the ground from where she’s cut her feet against the broken twigs and bramble. It’s much chillier here, beneath the canape, especially now it’s later in the day. All she has on is that bikini. No wonder she’s shaking like a leaf. That water must be freezing.

“Eleanor!” He calls to her.

No reaction.

A rare surge of anger takes him as he strides forward, grabbing her by the shoulders and forcing her up onto her feet. She gasps and meets him with wide eyes, her hands moving up in defence, struggling a little in his grip.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING OUT HERE?” He demands to know.

“I…I…”

“DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW WORRIED I WAS?!” He asks, one hand cupping her cheek, eyes scanning over to make sure she hasn’t harmed herself more than he can see; “WHAT THE FORK, ELEANOR, YOU WOULDN’T EVEN LET JANET NEAR YOU?! YOU COULD HAVE SLIPPED SOMEWHERE, YOU COULD HAVE BROKEN YOUR ANKLE OR YOUR NECK AND…YOU JUST DON’T GO WANDERING OFF LIKE THAT, DO YOU-.”

Her hand strikes his cheek and sends him staggering back, more from surprise than anything else.

Michael rubs his face, only feeling a slight tingle, before he looks back at her. She already looks torn between revulsion at him and horrified at her own action. Her hand shakes in the air before her.

He dares to smile; “Ah…That’s more like it. That’s my Eleanor.”

It hadn’t quite been his intention to bring that out of her but he supposes it’s one way to do it.

She sniffs, stepping back; “F…Fork you…” the tears fall from her eyes; “Don’t you ever yell at me like that…”

“I know. I’m sorry.” He says, oddly grateful for the slap. He raises his palm up; “I shouldn’t have shouted. I was worried though. This is your beach and I’ve told you, you can go anywhere you want, but I’d rather you told me, okay? Or Janet, whichever. You didn’t come up here just for a stroll through the woods barefoot, did you?”

Eleanor looks down at her feet, the stream staining with a little blood from her cuts, mixing with the dirty water. She wraps her arms around herself.

“Something happened at the beach, didn’t it? You saw something and it…scared you?” He cautiously approaches, leaves shifting against his flip-flops.

He keeps his hands out, ready to catch her. She looks cornered, like a tiger in a cage.

“Eleanor, talk to me.” He pleads, “We always talk these things through, don’t we. You trust me, don’t you? You’ve got no reason to be ashamed or afraid around me…”

_Lying is always more convincing when it’s closer to the truth._

It is the truth. She’s the only human in existence who has nothing to fear from him.

The sight of her trembling like that is making him wish for retirement.

“You must be getting cold. Here…” He unbuttons his shirt and slips it off, holding it out to her; “Your favorite dress, yeah?”

Her eyes look up, firstly to his own torso. She wets her lips. For some reason her aura pinkens a little along with her cheeks. No, he refuses to draw attention to the fact that it’s the first time she’s seen his skin suit beneath a piece of clothing. He waves the garment and she takes it, sliding her arms into it, letting it cover her. Michael gets to enjoy his own amusement at how his shirt always almost reaches her knees. Short stuff.

_So cute._

He gives her a moment to button it up, resisting the urge to offer to help when her uneasy fingers struggle.

“Are your feet sore? Why not let me have a look-?”

“They’re fine.” She sniffs, rubbing her nose on the sleeve.

He doesn’t push.

Eleanor crouches back down, sitting herself on a fallen tree stump beside the stream. Tears continue to run down her cheeks as she avoids his gaze.

“Too many people?” He asks, getting down to her level, “Janet had the simulation connected to your desires so there may have been a glitch which caused it to feel a bit…claustrophobic? Does that sound right?”

Eleanor nods, “…At least I didn’t create another sink hole, huh.”

“No,” he laughs that off, trying not to look too thrilled with that memory; “All fixed now. We can always come up with fun stories about the fake people without them crowding your beach.”

“…I thought I saw him.” She confesses, quietly; “He seemed so real…I just had to run…”

Ah, so it was what he feared; “…You saw Trevor?”

Who the fork else, you ding dong?

“Is that the first time you’ve seen him recently?” Michael asks her.

She bites her lip.

“Eleanor…”

Her fist clenches in her lap; “…Just…glimpses here and there…Sometimes I think I hear him…laughing. Oh my god, I know it’s not real! I know he can’t be here! It’s just…Just my forked up head making all these images and I hate it!”

“That’s why you haven’t been sleeping, hmm? Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” He smiles; “Damn it, Eleanor, why haven’t you said anything?”

“Because I don’t want it to be real!” She tells him, her voice rising, “I don’t wanna be…that, again! That…weak, pathetic, mute…I like being me again, Michael! I like having fun and being able to do my own shirt and…I know you do as well. I know you like having fun with me and doing all this crazy, magic stuff and if that stops then…”

Her hands slip beneath the oversized sleeves before she brings them up to hide her face.

Michael blinks as he stares at her. Does she…honestly think that he would be angry at her for this reaction? Was he as much of the reason she ran as Trevor was? He tries to think back to when he ever could have given her that impression. Maybe it was something he said at the start? Before he started to really…

He doesn’t even know when that shift happened. He doesn’t know when the lie became reality.

All he knows now is that he can’t stop himself from reaching out and gathering her into his arms, holding her against his bare chest.

“Fork….I can still hear him. He's coming back...He’s coming back!”

“No, Eleanor, he’s not! He can’t-!”

Her hands grip his shoulder; “He’s gonna take me away, Michael! I don’t wanna go, please, please! I don’t wanna go!”

“Eleanor, listen to me!” He clutches her hands together in one of his, his other palm on her cheek; “I promise you! I swear on every single one of my paperclips that Trevor will not touch you again! I will never let him lay a single hand on you, okay?!”

The conflict in her expression as her tears continue to tumble down tell him she’s yet to be convinced, as much as she wants to believe it. If only he could summon the wretched demon in front of him now, he would let her watch him destroy the monster, so she knows there's nothing left to be afraid of. It's beyond mere frustration with a former colleague now. It's...hatred. Pure, unbridled hatred at what that jerk did to _his_ human.

“Oh, my sweet girl.” He pulls her in closer; “I know I let you down before but I will never, _ever_ , let you go again. You’re staying right here with me. No matter what.”

Her heartrate is still way too high.

“C’mon. Remember what we do.” He whispers; “Deep breath in…now name the five K’s.”

Eleanor inhales deeply; “…Kim, Kendall, Kylie, Kourtney, Khloe.”

“Good, now out.” He smiles, rubbing her back as she does so. They repeat it until he feels the tension leave her muscles and her breathing even out. She leans against him, hands finding as much skin as she can hold onto.

How can he not be proud of her? There used to be a time when it would take over an hour to calm her down from a panic attack. And then she would be catatonic most of the day.

He kisses the top of her head.

“…I just don’t want you to get sick of me.” She mumbles against his front; “…I’m finally cool to be with again. I like…just hanging out with you and not ruining it like this…”

“Hey, hey…” He looks down at her, so close, thumb rubbing her damp cheek; “I could never be sick of you. It doesn’t matter to me if you’re chatting my ear off about whatever weird stuff you once did at a Taylor Swift concert or if you don’t feel like talking at all…You’re still my Eleanor. You’re never ruining it if you don’t feel well. I’d rather you told me or Janet rather than hiding it. I know you used to like to handle these things on your own but…That doesn’t mean you have to. Not anymore.”

He knows what that’s like. To be alone. They both managed just fine for most of their existence. If she’s as much like him as he believes her to be…then he knows her fear of going back to how it was.

Her grip tightening tells him as much.

“This is still your getaway. Your holiday. If there are days when you feel like you just need to rest, just…not be strong or busy and just wanna…curl up in bed or on the sofa and let me do everything, you just say, okay?” He tells her; “You’re not weak for needing to rest. You’re the strongest being I’ve ever known…and I’ve met titans that would be dwarfed by how awesome you are.”

She breaks out a small laugh; “You’re forking with me…”

“Never.” He smiles, rocking her a little in his arms; “I can still be your friend when I’m looking after you, y’know. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

 _Torturer_ , however…That is one profession he can never mix in. He tried and failed.

She smiles against his neck; “I have no idea what I did to deserve any friends…Least of all you, bud. No one’s ever given as much of a shirt about me as you have. What the hell would I do without you?”

That sickening feeling rises again. Fork, it was supposed to be getting chillier, not warmer.

He rubs her back; “Oh…I ask myself the same thing every day…I-I mean if you hadn’t rebooted Janet, I might’ve been retired by now.” It’s a lie. But sometimes, when he’s watching her have one of her nightmares, he sometimes wishes he had died for real; “…And who knows how miserable I’d be if you were still…Oh. Let’s stop this.”

Stop before the truth explodes out of him, as if he’d swallowed a grenade of guilt.

“We’re here. We’re together. And we’re safe.” He smiles down at her; “That’s all that matters. Agreed?”

Eleanor blinks up and smiles, nodding. She then leans up, her lips perking. He quickly moves his head so they land on his cheek.

_She’d been aiming for somewhere else-_

It doesn’t matter. He can’t have…that. He can’t even allow himself to conceive of it.

Essence burning in his face, he just smiles back at her.

“Come on, sleepy head. I promised you a massage. And then you,” he pokes her nose until she scrunches it up; “Are gonna take the longest forking nap.”

She feigns a bite at his finger.

“Only if you do too. My Good Place, my rules.” She concedes; “I know you want me to read you the end of that Real Housewives book to send you off.” Michael sighs. He can agree to that, he thinks.

He shuffles back, leaving her sat back on the stump, so he can kneel down and look at her feet. His fingers caress the cuts on the sides, willing them to close with the most delicate of magic, and the softest brush of his skin. He feels her eyes looking down him. He glances up at her, feeling as though this is the closest he’s ever going to come to kneeling before the Ultimate Manager. Michael takes her other foot and kisses her toes, sending the magic through his lips this time, making her shudder as the skin repairs, as well as cleaning off the dirt.

“…Bit quicker that way.” He excuses.

“Sure it is.” She grins back, slipping her arms around his neck and letting out a yawn; “…You can take me home now, angel buddy.”

_And can I keep you?_

He should have thought about that before letting her go. She will find out, one day, he knows that. And all of this will crumble, just as he promised her it wouldn’t. He hates being a liar.

The best he can do is live in the dream for as long as it will last.


End file.
